Just a short video of this year's reindeer parade.
Every year, Huntly (and other towns across the north east of Scotland) hosts the Cairngorm Reindeer for a short parade so the kids can see and learn all about the reindeer and talk to Santa before he visits again on Christmas Eve.
The Cairngorm Reindeer live on the Cairngorm Mountain and are free to roam about and live naturally in the wild. They are, however, used to being handled, groomed and fed by people and are very happy to come along and bring Santa to see the children. They are very well looked after and each visit to a town is by different reindeer so they each only do one or two parades a year; they are mixed up with every visit and all get used to it and are not stressed or agitated in any way. There are around 150 reindeer in this herd so the workload at this time of the year is very evenly spread as they all take turns to bring Santa around the various towns to see the children.
You will see two calves in this video. They are this year's and were born in September. Calves are brought along with older reindeer so they get used to being around people, particularly children. They learn to not be stressed and these two will be doing parades until they are eleven years old, when they are retired.
We've also included some photos of the lights in our town's square. We've lived just outside of Huntly, Aberdeenshire, since 2005 and we love it here.
We hope you enjoy these pictures and we also wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Ellie and Martyn xx

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