A Good Day’s Hard Walking

I woke up earlyish in the tent and tried to pack as much as I could in the inner tent, which keeps out the midges. I had a sandwich left which I’d bought in Inverness and a Bounty bar so breakfast was provided for and I’d surely come across a shop at some time before Fort William. Sadly my water bottle top wasn’t fixed tightly enough and most of it had leaked in the bottom of my rucksack. I took a couple of mouthfuls, packed the tent and set off up the footpath into the mountains at 8.15. Not a bad start. It was raining and my boots were still wet inside from the previous day but my feet and legs were in reasonable shape. 

I followed a Scottish Right of Way through up to the top of a pass and down to some ruins of an ancient and small farmhouse. I expected the spectre of an old Highlander to appear on the photos: the place had that feel to it. Particularly with the skeleton of a sheep in one of the two rooms.

It was a difficult walk to the ruins, across a waterlogged plain with very deep peat bog ‘holes’ where the unwary would disappear up to their thighs. After that it was less boggy but straddling a steep mountainside for a couple of miles. I found a decent crossing of the river, it didn’t matter too much as my shoes were sodden, and went downstream reasonably quickly into a pine forest with a decent woodland path through it. All the time a mechanical banging was growing louder. 

In a sudden clearing I came across a dam building project for a hydro power facility. In the middle of a remote area. I hadn’t met another walker yet. 

It’s not just a small dam that’s involved. As I walked down the project’s dirt track there were massive machines laying waste to trees, planting huge pipes, crushing rocks and spreading them to make more gravel roads in what on e was a lonely landscape. But for a good, sustainable purpose. It’s ok. The machines were in touch with each other and knew I was coming. They don’t get many walkers but they all stopped before I arrived and started up after I passed, over the course of a country mile. 

The track then dropped down to Clunes and Loch Lochy. I got there about 3.00pm and walked down the loch to the end where a river flowed out and the Caledonian Canal paced it side by side. 

The barren, desolate and dangerous Cape Wrath Trail then becomes a canal towpath until its conclusion at the end of my journey at Fort William. Nevertheless this domestication didn’t produce a shop or cafe or pub or nuthin.  I was starving.

After phoning 27 B&Bs in and around Fort William darling babe Maggie found one that had a room for a foot-soaked, fatigued furquahar. I rolled in at 7pm, absolutely exhausted after summat like 25 miles, had a decent meal in a local bar and slept like a baby. I woke up every hour crying and wetting myself! 

Cheers.