There were some fatigued walkers in Cromdale this morning, facing the next 12 miles to Dava Station. Compared to yesterday it is not a difficult walk, as the route leaves the Spey Valley and turns north along the Dava Way towards our final destination of Forres. Most of ‘the Dava’ is on the track bed of the former Forres to Grantown railway.

At Castle Grant we witnessed the remains of the ultimate status symbol – a private railway halt. The station opened in 1863 but even Scottish aristocracy couldn’t prevent the Beeching cuts, and it closed around the time the line ended in 1965. Dreamers may notice the bench in the photograph, and imagine members of the Grant family, in all their period finery, awaiting a train stopping just for them.

Another dream was realised at ‘the dragoon’, where Mary met ‘her soldier’. The chainsaw sculpture celebrates the route used by William of Orange’s forces in ending a period of Jacobite resistance, some 50 years before Culloden.

Dava Station was the end of the line for Mary on ‘Walk Moray’, as her fiancée returned today from a four month posting in the Falklands. She will miss the final push to Forres which, as I sit typing this, does seem a little daunting! 79 miles completed and 16 miles to go. We can do it!