In reply to RedTar:
I strongly agree with Paul the Northerner. Halfway up a frozen cliff in a whiteout and a gale is not the place to learn or practise ropework. Go to the indoor wall and/or sport climbing and/or some benign sea-cliff or roadside crag and get your belaying, changing over, gear-placing, gear-lifting etc. slick and safe *there* before you try doing it in the thick of a Cairngorms winter.
This is worth doing even if you go out with a guide, which like others I think would be a good idea too. The less the guide has to watch your ropework, the more s/he will trust you and be prepared to take you up something genuinely exciting.
A few years back I was recovering from an accident and hired a guide because I wanted to get back on the crag, but had lost a lot of confidence, so I felt almost like I was starting again. The guide was the late lamented Chris Dale, and he was great. We were based at Alan Kimber's place in Fort William, and we had one day on the indoor wall on ropework (because it was useless outside), then one day on The White Line IV,4 on the Ben. Great route, and really good value for money.
It doesn't actually matter whether you hire a Cairngorms guide or a Fort Wiliam guide or a guide from Martin Moran's place in Lochcarron or Mike Lates' in Broadford, since the guide will take you where the conditions are. But that is the basic rule for successful winter adventures in Scotland: keep an open mind about venue, and an even more open mind about route. (It can get really dangerous to fixate on Point Five or whatever. Have dream routes, sure, but don't go out and insist on climbing that route and no other no matter how crowded it is, and no matter how marginal nick it's in.)
Above all, learn to read the meteo really really minutely, because given our Atlantic climate, it's impossible to predict a week in advance, let alone a month, where the good stuff is going to be.
Post edited at 13:50