Autumnwatch episode 2 2019: Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan, Gillian Burke and Iolo Williams are live from the Cairngorms National Park, where overnight events have already created dramas.
Tonight the team look at how this year’s seasonal changes have shaped autumn 2019. Michaela embarks on a wild goose chase and the camera team are on a mission to find a deer rut deep in the Abernethy forest.
Autumnwatch episode 2 2019
Cairngorms National Park is a national park in northeast Scotland, established in 2003. It was the second of two national parks established by the Scottish Parliament, after Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, set up in 2002. The park covers the Cairngorms range of mountains, and surrounding hills. Already the largest national park in the British Isles, in 2010 it was expanded into Perth and Kinross.
As of 2018 it was estimated that the national park received 1.8 million visitors each year. The majority of visitors are domestic, with 25 per cent coming from elsewhere in the UK, and 21 per cent being from other countries.
Cairngorms National Park
The Cairngorms National Park covers an area of 4,528 km2 in the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Moray, Highland, Angus and Perth and Kinross. The mountain range of the Cairngorms lies at the heart of the national park, but forms only one part of it, alongside other hill ranges such as the Angus Glens and the Monadhliath, and lower areas like Strathspey and upper Deeside. Three major rivers rise in the park: the Spey, the Dee, and the Don. The Spey, which is the second longest river in Scotland, rises in the Monadhliath, whilst the Dee and the Don both rise in the Cairngorms themselves.
The Cairngorms themselves are a spectacular landscape, similar in appearance to the Hardangervidda National Park of Norway in having a large area of upland plateau.[citation needed] The range consists of three main plateaux at about 1000–1200 m above sea level, above which domed summits rise to around 1300 m. Many of the summits have tors, free-standing rock outcrops that stand on top of the boulder-strewn landscape. The edges of the plateaux are in places steep cliffs of granite and they are excellent for skiing, rock climbing and ice climbing. The Cairngorms form an arctic-alpine mountain environment, with tundra-like characteristics and long-lasting snow patches.
