UKC

Anyone know what parking is like at the Linn of Dee at the moment? Is it filling up on the weekends? Just trying to work out if it's realistic to plan on starting a two-day trip from there on saturday morning, or if we'd need to get there very early...

I've not been to Linn of Dee for ages, but I have recently had a couple of Saturday outings to other Scottish hill hotspots, Ben Chonzie from Glen Lednock and Ben Vorlich (the eastern one) from Ardvorlich. Both of these felt slightly against my better judgement but in both cases rather than go early I did the opposite and delayed into the afternoon. And both times I got a parking space without any problem due to some folk having already been and gone, and although both hills were busy at first it was almost entirely people coming down and the upper slopes were quiet. Linn of Dee is a bit different in that people are likely to be having longer days than on Chonzie/Vorlich, but a late rather than early start might still work given that there's currently so much daylight.

There's an overflow car park just before you get to the Linn of Dee bridge.  If it's judged that the car parking beyond this point is full, you will be directed to the new car park.  It's less than 10 minutes walk from it to the normal car park, so no big deal.  We turned up after 2pm on Saturday, and there was space in the overflow car park.  We wanted to go to the Linn of Quoich, but had brought bikes, so no problem.  We were away overnight, and it wasn't an issue leaving the car there.

Ah that's great to know, thanks very much. I didn't realise they'd opened up an overflow car park.

And what has that to do with the Linn of Dee?

That there's possibly an argument for going late rather than early (as the OP was considering) if starting from popular places.