King's House to Rannoch Station
(12 miles/343 metres ascent)
On the bright side, though, it was another lovely morning, and so I went back to my sleeping bag after poking my head out of the door, and lay around there until 8am, at which stage I got up and went over to the hotel for breakfast.
I had a wash and general brush-up in the hotel, and then went to the dining room. However, I was stopped at the door by a member of staff, who said they were too busy to serve breakfast to non-residents. I asked if they'd be doing it later, since it wasn't what I'd been told the night before, and she went off and then returned with the bloke who'd been working in the bar the previous night. He said breakfast was no problem, but asked me to return between 9 and 9.15am, when the rush of residents would be over. That wasn't a problem, and so I went back to the tent and starting pushing my things in and out of their stuff sacks, in preparation for packing them up.
Quite a number of other tents had arrived the night before as I was in the bar, and I passed some of them on the way to and from the hotel. After a while I went out and wandered around the moor a bit, reading an information sign that had been erected to describe the origins of the hotel. Then I went back and read a little bit of my book, and eventually, at 9.15am, I returned to the hotel for my second attempt at getting breakfast.
This time I found a number of other campers standing waiting to be served. I rang the bell at reception, and when the young waitress who I'd seen earlier poked her head round the corner I told her I'd returned as instructed, but she told me they were still too busy. By now I was getting worried, as I'd been told the night before they stopped serving at 9.30, and that was fewer than 10 minutes away. If I'd not been told they did breakfast I'd have been on my way to Rannoch Station by now, and it was beginning to sound as though they weren't going to provide breakfast after all.
I told the waitress what I'd been told earlier i.e. to return between 9 and 9.15am, and then another woman came out. She stared at me without speaking for quite some time, which actually struck me as surprisingly rude, but eventually she said that I shouldn't have been told they'd do breakfast for non-residents, as they were really very busy and she couldn't guarantee anything. I've never had the misfortune to have to stand in a soup kitchen for a hand-out, but that morning at the King's House I feel I began to develop a pretty good idea of what it might feel like, with the campers being treated and spoken to that way in front of the residents. I had to remind myself that I was actually queueing up to pay almost £8.00 for my cereal, coffee, 'kipper' and toast!
Anyway, soon after that the second woman returned and told us that two tables had been laid. We went in, and I finally managed to sit down, round a corner at the end of the room. Toast and coffee eventually arrived - the coffee was actually really good, when it came - and then a rather pedestrian fish, which wasn't quite what I'd expected when I read 'kipper' on the menu. It tasted ok, though, which is the main thing. I managed to get a second cup of coffee when the waitress returned some time later to see to a table of residents sitting next to me, and after that I left.
I stopped to pay my £7.95 on the way out. As I was settling up, the woman I'd spoken to earlier asked me what I was doing, and when I told her I was walking across Scotland she gave me a bag of lunch. That was kind, but by that time I didn't actually want the lunch. The fact is that I've never been made to feel so unwelcome and uncomfortable in a hotel. It seems to me that they should either provide breakfast for non-residents at a pre-arranged time, with common courtesy and a smile - after all, it's not as though they're giving it away! - or simply not provide it all, which is equally fine. That's simply my opinion, but I won't be going back.
I went back to the tent and began to pack up. Others were doing the same, and as we were doing so a steady stream of walkers who'd been staying in the hotel walked past on their way back to the WHW path and stared over at us, silently. Maybe they'd overheard the conversation in the reception area, and I wondered whether perhaps they thought we were a refugee camp of some description! :-)
It was about 11am by the time I got away, but the walk was immediately beautiful. I took another photograph down Glen Coe in the direction from which I'd approached the day before...
...and then another picture of Buachaille Etive Mor.
Buachaille Etive Mor appeared to assume a greater majesty the further away I got from it, and I stopped to take its picture several times as I walked on across Rannoch Moor.
The moor itself appeared vast and silent, apparently stretching away almost into infinity.
I felt very lucky, as I'd expected bogs on Rannoch Moor, but in this extremely sunny weather the boggy bits had almost all dried up. There were enough deep bits for me to feel that gaiters were worthwhile (and besides, I wanted to try out the new ones), but it was absolutely nothing like it must be in more usual May conditions, when I'm sure there are lots of places where people have to wade through water well above their ankles!
The moor was absolutely gorgeous, and I saw no-one all day. I stopped for coffee and a snack at a very large rock...
...and took a picture of Little Peewiglet preparing to eat up his lunch.
I sat on the rock for quite some time, looking over to the little islands in Loch Laidon. It was utterly peaceful: warm and silent, with a bit of a heat haze shimmering over the moor. I didn't want to move on, but eventually I had to pack up my things and get going again.
I passed a pretty little island which the map calls Eilean Lubhair, and stopped to take a picture. It was overlooked by a small building shown on the map as Tigh na Cruaiche, and I thought about dropping down the hillside to take a closer look but decided not to, as by now I was keen to press on towards Rannoch Station.
I took another picture of Eilean Lubhair further along...
...and then had another little play with the fold out viewfinder on my camera, to photograph some lovely grasses.
Grasses 
The last part of the day involved a walk through several kilometers of pine forest, along a broad forest track. I love to look at the trees at this time of year, with the new growth burning a brighter green at the end of the branches and often still topped by the paper-thin caramel-brown wrapper that protects it, until it's ready to emerge into the world.
There were all sorts of wonderful clusters of cones hanging in the higher branches of the trees...
Cones 
...and the new life was bursting out all over the place! :-)
The track snaked down between the trees...
...and as I got a bit lower the banks became damper, and some pretty mosses and other water loving small plants and creatures began to appear.
Eventually I emerged from the woods and the rail bridge to Rannoch Station appeared to my left.
From a distance, Rannoch Station itself looked a bit like an Army barracks set down in the middle of nowhere...
...but as I got closer that impression was dispelled.
I hadn't been quite sure what to expect of Rannoch Station, since it seemed such an unusual name for a place. What hadn't occurred to me, though, was that it is actually a station - a train station - on the Scotrail Fort William to London Euston line! The London sleeper goes through in both directions every day except Saturday, and I'm already planning to make use of it for weekend walking dashes up to Rannoch Moor. It really must be one of the most beautiful and isolated stations in the whole of Great Britain.
As soon as I'd crossed the line the Moor of Rannoch Hotel came into view. I'd been looking forward to staying there since booking a room a couple of months earlier, and I'd read great things about it in a couple of guides. I could tell it was definitely my sort of place when the man I spoke to, when I rang to book, automatically put me in a room with a deep bath when I told him I was walking :-) In fact, I'd been carrying a clean T shirt all the way from Shiel Bridge specifically to wear for dinner here, and I was really looking forward to putting it on...
It was 5.15pm when I arrived, and the mirror in the hall provided an opportunity for another interesting mirror piccy experiment...
...and after that I took off my pack, left Little Peewiglet to guard it in the porch and went in to find the owners. The kind owner was just inside - unfortunately I've managed to forget her name, and that of her husband - but I received one of the warmest welcomes I've ever had, and was immediately shown up to my room, which had a view from the window right back over the moor to Glen Coe.
I went back down to collect my pack and take it up to my room. At that stage I turned on the bath, went down to ask for a double G&T from the bar and returned to my room to luxuriate in deep, soapy water, with a G&T in one hand and my book in the other. Bliss :-))
I'd arranged to have an early dinner, and so eventually I dragged myself out of the bath and into my nice clean T shirt and spare trousers. I took the opportunity to wash some things, and hung them from the towel rail in my bedroom in front of the heater, to dry.
After that I went downstairs, where I had a chat with the man I'd spoken to when booking my room. He too was very welcoming, and I sipped a glass of red wine as I read through the menu. I'm more or less a veggie, but I do eat some free-range meat, and this night I decided to have stuffed field mushrooms, followed by fillet steak with a whisky, cream sauce. At that stage I tried to ring in to TGO Control, but my mobile had no reception there, and the proprietor allowed me to use the hotel phone. I couldn't get through to Control as the line was engaged, but I left a message with the hotel reception to the effect that I was safe and well, and that I'd ring tomorrow morning.
Dinner was ready soon after that, and I went to sit in the lovely conservatory with absolutely astounding views across the moor. I've noticed that birds in Scotland (and other wild places) seem to like to fly around together playing, and there were several pairs of small birds flitting about, landing on the telephone wires outside the window and then flying up and down the line, apparently trying to knock each other off. Whenever I see the poor pigeons with damaged and misshapen feet stumbling around the pavements of large English cities, searching pathetically for scraps to eat, I'm always reminded of what an entirely different life they'd have had if they'd been fortunate enough to have been born elsewhere.
There were two other walkers staying in the hotel that night, although they weren't Challengers and they were walking in the opposite direction. They were friendly, though, and we chatted together when they also came in for dinner. They were Dutch, and had walked all over the world! They'd walked over from Kinloch Rannoch that day, and they said it was a pretty, if tiring, walk. Most of it was on roads, and so their feet were hurting a bit. The proprietors had told me that the forecast for the following day was for more scorching sunshine, and I began to wonder whether I dared zip off the bottom of my walking trousers, since it seemed unlikely that the middle of the road would be teeming with ticks. Hmmm...
I finished dinner, which was delicious, and sat back to enjoy the last of my glass of wine. It was a lovely evening, and the only thing spoiling it at all was that I seemed to have developed a truly dreadful cold. I must have been really quite a fearsome sight, with sunburned face and arms along with chapped lips and a red and runny nose from my cold. I looked forward to getting to the shops the following day, so that I could stock up with suntan lotion, lip salve and tissues. It was unfortunate, too, that I'd posted my Tilley hat home from Fort William, as part of my weight reduction exercise: at that stage I'd seen several days of intermittently wet weather, but since sending the hat away the sun had been splitting the flags! My Lowe Alpine Mountain Hat wasn't likely to fit the bill as a sun hat, and so I wondered whether I might be able to get something suitable at the next stop.
I went upstairs soon afterwards, and was snuggling down in bed with my book by 9pm, where I fell asleep very fast.
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