Gleann Cia-aig to Fort William
(15.7 miles/273 metres ascent)
I still needed to get to Fort William in good time, though, and so at about 8am I began to make a move. The rain had stopped by now, but it was dull out.
It was 8.50am before I was packed and moving, which was later than I'd intended to be, but the day soon developed into a beautiful morning as I walked through the forest along a track with stupendous views to the right. It was lovely.
I'd taken along a mini-disc player with a selection of music and some audiobooks, and now I put on a collection of short stories. It felt like absolute luxury to be walking in such beauty, warm and comfortable and listening to a book :)
An hour or so into the walk some instinct told me that I might have taken the wrong path (I've certainly been waiting a long time for that sort of instinct to develop - about 20 years, it seems to me!), and when I checked the map, and then the GPS, it turned out I was right. I was glad to have spotted the error at an early stage, or I could have added several unnecessary kilometers to the day. The correct path turned right and descended steeply through the wood, and when I got to the bottom I was faced with a gorgeous waterfall.
I walked a short distance along the road, and then as I turned south there was a lovely view along Loch Arkaig to my right...
...and after that my path went SE in the direction of Gairlochy.
I passed a number of interesting things on the way: a little lamb scratching itself on the other side of the river...
...and this interesting building near to the Clan Cameron museum at Achnacarry.
I stopped for a coffee and a bit of flapjack at a nice old tree trunk, which I felt looked totally tick free...
...and stopped for a picture of a pretty mauve flower in the grass. I think this was the Cuckooflower, or Lady's Smock.
As I walked along the path through the forest to Gairlochy I came across an enormous tree apparently upended by the wind, and stood my rucksack next to it for a little perspective. Wow!
I was still surrounded by distant views of snow topped mountains...
...and by this time I was finally not too far from Gairlochy, where I intended to go south to Fort William along the Great Glen Way, which runs at that point along the side of the Caledonian Canal.
I arrived at Gairlochy, turned left to cross the canal and then turned left again along the road towards Spean Bridge, exchanging a cheery greeting with a woman who was painting a fence along the way. 5 minutes later I realised I was walking in the wrong direction, since I was now meant to be heading for Fort William rather than Spean Bridge, and so I turned round and walked back again, re-passing the woman at the fence whilst trying to look as though I'd intended to do that all along... :-)
The weather had been warm, and was still bright, but for some reason the wind along the canal was icy, and it wasn't long before I had to stop to put on my warm jacket, fleecy hat and mitts. I felt better after that, though, and carried on as quickly as I could in the hope of getting to Fort William as close as possible to 4pm.
The canal felt longer than it had looked on the map. An hour or so into the walk, though, I saw another backpacker lounging around on the grass in a sunny dip just to the left of the path, and so I stopped and asked if she was a Challenger. She was, and so I stopped too, so that we could chat and swap experiences :-) This was one of the Barbaras, and she'd just come from Fort William. She told me it wasn't too far ahead, and that was very encouraging. There seemed to be a whole new micro-climate existing down in the little grassy dip, and I was able to remove my hat, gloves and jacket and soak up a little sunshine. I was still pretty nervous about ticks, though, and asked Barbara - who was lolling about in a most relaxed sort of fashion - whether she'd encountered any. She hadn't. Thank goodness for that, I thought...
Eventually we both packed up our bits and prepared to move on, hoping to meet again at the post-walk dinner in Montrose the following week. As sometimes happens, the little break seemed to have sapped my energy, and I now found my legs increasingly achey as I pounded my way along the towpath towards the town. I brightened up a bit when I glanced to the right, though, and saw someone's inadequately pegged lurid, yellow tent blow away and turn upside down on the other side of the canal... heh, heh... :-)
...but it was ok - the two young blokes soon got it back under control, and fastened it back to the ground again.
I sat down for another brief rest, and saw another walker advancing along the path in the same direction as me. I got up to press on, and 5 minutes or so later the walker had caught me up. This was another Challenger - Willie - and he was hurrying to Fort William to replace his spectacles, which he had somehow lost. I explained that I was hurrying there to make the Post Office and the Paramo shops, and we agreed to hurry along together.
Willie walked as though he had rocket-ships fastened to his boots, and I was hard-pressed to keep up, but I was afraid that the blow to my morale which would result from dropping behind would be so severe as to be possibly irreparable! And so I managed to produce a spurt out of nowhere, and by only just after 3pm we found ourselves sprinting through the outer limits of Fort William towards the shops! :-)
Almost before I knew it I was standing by Nevisports, at the Kinlochleven end of the main street, and drooling in at all the kit inside. Willie had told me of a youth hostel down by the Glenn Nevis campsite, and I'd decided to stay there, if they had room for the night. Otherwise I'd stick to my original plan of camping at the campsite. Willie and I therefore agreed tentatively to meet up again later at the youth hostel, but in the meantime we went our own ways.
I was not only tired but starving by this time, as it was now 3pm and I'd not eaten anything more than a flapjack all day. I went into the gear shop, though, where I was able to buy a second pair of the impressive Sealskinz socks (since wet weather seemed to be the order of the day), as well as a length of sturdy elasticated cord for customisation of my pack. I felt that was pretty restrained, although it does have to be conceded that there was an issue about where any additional new kit might be able to fit into my sack!
From there I went to the Post Office, where I collected my first Post Restante parcel and took it outside in search of a pub where I could simultaneously disembowel the parcel, make up a new parcel full of redundant or non-essential kit to send home, and get a drink with something to eat. There may well be a welcoming pub somewhere along the main drag in Fort William, where a woman with a large rucksack and sore feet can repair for a bit of peace, space and replenishment, but if there is then I couldn't find it. I opened a couple of doors and looked in, but it was all a bit too 'Slaughtered Lamb' for comfort, and I quickly retreated again...
Finally, in desperation and with one eye on my watch and the Post Office closing time, I nipped into a bakery instead, where I picked up a couple of cheese and chutney rolls from the shelf and carried them over to the till. I knew I'd picked them up because I could see them in my hand, but - weirdly - I couldn't actually feel anything. I think they must have been the lightest filled rolls in the world, and it was immediately clear that they weren't the sort of thing that a ravenous person who's just carried a 15+kg rucksack about 14 miles on very little sleep needed in order to stave off imminent starvation and collapse. I put them back - carefully, so that I didn't squash them with my hefty backpacker's hand - and asked for two cheese and onion pasties instead. I then retired with the pasties and the parcels to a seat on a bench outside in the square, where I proceeded to do the business with my parcels whilst snapping up the pasties.
It wasn't long before I'd made a new parcel and wrapped it up with parcel tape, and I whizzed it down to the Post Office for next day despatch. At that stage I made my way to the supermarket, hoping to find a new supply of cheese and onion pasties and flapjacks for lunch, along with supplementary coffee to perk up the rather tasteless concoction of coffee and dried milk that I'd brought along in a bag, for my flask. By this time the sun was scorchingly hot, and I had to dig around in my pack for my sunglasses before proceeding along the road. I wasn't able to get the pasties, but instead I bought some Ryvita and plastic cheese slices, which was a very successful idea that Jean had shown me. After an hour or so the Ryvita absorbs some of the moisture from the cheese, and the whole thing becomes less brittle and really quite yummy. (Well, yummy in the context of it being a piece of plastic cheese sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard... let's not get this out of perspective... :-)
I was now ready to make my long-promised pilgrimage to the Paramo shop at the other end of the road, and finally I was in there, fondling the Paramo wind-shirts. In the event, though, I didn't like the ones I saw there as much as the kit I already had, and so I Just Said No to New Kit :-) I didn't like to leave with nothing, though, and so I bought a mug to replace the incredibly expensive titanium mug that I'd somehow managed to lose on the journey down from the Fedden Ruin the day before, and also a new pair of gaiters to replace mine, which were now really muddy.
(Actually, that was a wee jokey. I'm not *quite* that daft! :-) My existing gaiters were very flimsy, and had been letting in water as I'd waded through boggy bits over the preceding days, and so I decided the time had come to replace them.)
After all that I was finally able to stop and draw breath, and so I got out my mobile and rang into Challenge Control. I'd not spoken to JD before, but he was very friendly and welcoming on the other end of the line, and interested in where I was and what I'd been doing. We chatted for a while, and I confirmed that I'd ring again on Thursday, from Rannoch Station.
By this stage I was carrying not only the rucksack but also two large bags of kit, food and other bits and pieces. I made my way back down the road towards Glen Nevis, and the road truly did seem to stretch on endlessly in front of me to the youth hostel. I had to stop and remove all my layers except the Icebreaker, as the sun was now even hotter than it had been an hour earlier, and basically I just had to plod for 2.5 miles along the road to my destination. Unfortunately I'd mis-read the sign at the roundabout, and had thought that both campsite and YH were 2 miles away. When the YH didn't appear immediately after the campsite I seriously considered lying down in the road to await either sleep or death - whichever should come first - but the sight of some pretty, pyramidal shaped purple flowers perked me up just long enough to make the final push. (A hunt through the flower books subsequently suggests that this pretty flower was Bugle.)
Half a mile later, I arrived at the YH, went in and was relieved to find that they did have room. Incidentally, the cost was £12 for members (that's me) and £13 for non-members, which does seem to me to raise at least a bit of an issue about the point of membership, for those of us who stay in hostels fewer than 15 and a half times a year.
Anyway... I dragged my kit to a dormitory along the corridor, and then made my way to what turned out to be just about the best shower I've ever had in my entire life! Based on previous experiences in YH showers, a power shower was not what I was expecting... and I stood entranced, allowing the force of the hot jet to massage my neck and then my shoulders and my back. I gave serious consideration to remaining in the shower for the rest of my life, but eventually I decided I was still very hungry, and so I dried off, dressed quickly in my one remaining change of clothing and made my way back down the road to the restaurant I'd passed earlier - the Glen Nevis Restaurant and Bar.
At the Glen Nevis Restaurant and Bar I had fish and chips followed by cheese and biscuits, 2 refreshing pints of cider and a coffee. I wrote up my little notebook, and read a bit of my book. Afterwards I shuffled back along the road to the YH, where I was keen to go straight to bed. However, I felt I'd better take advantage of the opportuntity to wash - and dry - some kit, and so I washed my waterproof trousers, a pair of socks, knickers and a baselayer by hand in the sink - the biodegradeable, non-biological, liquid soap seemed to work well - gave them two rounds of the tumble dryer and pegged them to a line in the drying room. At that stage I returned to my dormitory, where I dumped all my remaining stuff on the floor, crawled into my sleeping bag on the bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
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