Loch Bhac to Straloch
(22 miles/874 metres ascent)
I got up to go to the loo, and on the way back I took an early morning photo.
A coot or moorhen was already fishing on the loch, and further along the bank a sudden movement caught my eye. I looked over and thought I saw a fisherman standing in the water, casting his line, but there was no further movement and so I concluded that it must simply be a dead tree of some description.
As is often the case, it took me longer than was strictly necessary to get my things together. I spent some time examining a pretty mayfly that had got into my drinking mug (the one I thought I'd lost, but had found lurking right at the bottom of my pack a couple of days earlier), and trying to hold the mug with my left hand while focussing the camera with my right. The attempt wasn't really very successful, but here's the piccy anyway :-)
It was 7.45am before I was ready to go, but I stopped to take one final picture of the loch before I moved away. In doing so I realised that the submerged log was actually an early fisherman after all, and I spent some time watching him casting the line across the loch.
As soon as my path emerged from the wood and out onto the hillside I scared a deer, and just managed to get my camera out before it ran out of sight.
It's lucky that I have a habit of keeping an eye on the ground as I'm walking along, because just after the deer I came across a large toad on the path, the first I've seen for many years!
I took a picture back towards the loch...
...and then pressed on in the direction of Blair Atholl. A series of bright green, bushy little trees picked out the line of the river meandering through the moor.
As I walked I suddenly came across another deer just a little in front and to the right of me, and somehow it hadn't hear me coming. Unfortunately, I did just a bit too much faffing about, trying to compose a nice picture, and in the short time that it took for the camera to focus once I'd made up my mind, the deer saw me, jumped up in horror and was gone. Here's the empty picture...
A little later I came across a dead sheep in a pretty wood...
...and soon after that I passed through a farm on my way down to the A9. As I approached, a whole field full of animals looked up from their grazing and watched me walk by. Perhaps they don't get many visitors!
A little further on I stopped to chat with a sheep and its lambs - it was some time since I'd had anyone else to talk to, after all - but unfortunately I was spotted by the farmer, out walking with his dog. I grinned, waved over and walked on, hoping the farmer wasn't close enough to see me blushing, but he just stared back impassively, and didn't return my wave. I thought the dog looked a bit shocked. They probably both thought I was a dangerous lunatic, and out of the corner of my eye I could still see the farmer watching me for some time as I disappeared into the distance :-)
There was a most elegant tree not long after that...
...and as I pressed on down Blair Castle came into sight on the other side of the road.
I passed trees covered in some lovely blossom...
...and after that I sat down for a short rest and a bit of flapjack and coffee, and it eventually took me quite a long time finally to wend my way down through the fields to a point at which I was able to escape, in order to cross the A9.
On the other side of the A9 was a field, and I could see that the field would eventually lead down to the River Garry, which I needed to cross to get to Blair Atholl. I couldn't see the bridge that was marked on the map, though, and nor could I tell whether there was actually a path from the road directly to the bridge a little further along. I decided to take the field, though, and I was eventually able to push my way through a tangle of low, brittle-branchy trees at the bottom of the field in order to emerge onto the rocky fringes of the river. Unfortunately I still couldn't see the bridge, and so I pulled out my Garmin Geko to take a grid reference. That confirmed that the bridge was some distance further along the river to the east, and I set off to walk there. There was actually a little track along the sandy bank above the rocks, but there were a lot of low trees and it wasn't easy to get along it with a tall rucksack. I got there in the end, though, and it was just after 10am when I actually arrived at the bridge.
Blair Atholl was lovely. I passed a line of very attractive cottages, absolutely ringing with birdsong, after crossing the river, and then made my way up a slight incline towards a grocery shop, where I took off my pack and went in. I was able to get one cheese and onion pasty and 3 flapjacks, but there wasn't any camping gas. It occurred to me that there might be a shop on the campsite which I would have used had I stayed in Blair Atholl, and so I set off with my fingers crossed, as by now I was running low on gas supplies.
In the Blair Castle Caravan and Camping Site shop, a helpful assistant spent a long time digging through a variety of gas canisters in the store room at the back, and finally unearthed what I was looking for. What a relief! It was very kind of him to take the trouble to search, and I also bought Panadol (for aching feet...), lip salve (for the continuing cold from hell) and 6 small packets of tissues (ditto), as well as a couple of packets of crisps (naughty treat) and a bottle of Coke to consume at a table outside in the sun. Out at the table I rang in to TGO Control, to confirm my safety and position, and then just sat soaking up sun for a while.
As I was sitting there two little girls came over to talk, and said they thought my back must be very sore from carrying my pack. I told them it wasn't, but that my feet were... They were very friendly, and asked if I'd stayed at the camp the night before. When I explained that I'd camped by a loch on my own the little girls were horrified, and one of them said it was a real shame :-) Eventually I had to make a move to pack up, though, as by now it was almost 11.30 - so much for my early start... - and I still had over 16 miles to go to Kirkmichael, which was a very daunting prospect.
I'd finished my book, so I left it behind for another camper to read and made my way down to the road. I was a little confused about how to identify the road to Bridge of Tilt, but eventually I found it and set off on what turned out to be a very steep climb indeed.
I passed some lovely cottages with beautiful gardens in Old Bridge of Tilt...
...and then a most unusual building which appeared to be almost buried in the ground, with only the roof on display. I stopped to take a closer look and thought I could hear water running through it, but I also wondered whether I could hear the sound of music from somewhere deep inside. I couldn't work out whether I was just imagining the music, or whether perhaps it was a very cleverly located recording studio! In the end I simply couldn't work it out at all, and so I went on.
The road ahead was sunny and inviting, but the tarmac was hard on my feet.
I stopped for a while to play with the self-timer on the camera, and afterwards got a picture of an interesting post, with a couple of rocks sitting in a cleft at the top. I wondered whether the stones had been put there for fun, or whether it was some kind of sundial, but I still have no idea.
The climb went on and on and on, and I soon stopped to eat my pasty, hungry and tired. It was a bit worrying to be tired so early in the walk, since I still had such a long way to go. Still, after my snack I got my things together and went on again. The road eventually became a track, climbing higher and higher into the hills, and finally a narrow, grassy path. Yet again I was blown away by the beauty of the scenery, and the sight and sound of the birds - mainly lapwings - swooping and wheeling about like acrobats, and crying sharply to each other all the time.
Eventually I descended to a point at which I crossed the Allt Coire Lagain. I couldn't see a way to keep my feet dry, and so I took off my socks - Smartwool rather than Sealskinz, for once - and walked across in my trail shoes. The cold water on my baked, bruised feet was so extremely refreshing that when I got to the other side I took off my pack, put it down and waded back into the middle of the river to cool my feet down properly. I stood there for a minute or two and it was lovely :-) I put my socks back on afterwards, and over the course of the next hour or so the water in my trail shoes helped to keep my feet cool.
After that the path climbed quite steeply again up a bank on the other side, and then wound at quite a high level between two sets of hills, one on each side of the valley. The scene was almost Austrian, or so it seemed to me.
Although I kept moving forward as quickly as my legs would take me, it seemed to take at least twice as long as it should have taken for me to get to the point where I could turn the page of my laminated map and know that I was finally half way to Kirkmichael. After the almost interminable climb I finally reached the point at which the path began to descend. It widened as it got lower, and eventually evolved into a narrow tarmac road as I passed the first in a series of isolated and beautiful houses on the way down. I really was anxious to get to Kirkmichael if possible, and if not all the way then at least as far as I could manage, because the walk to Alyth the following day would be 16.5 miles long from there, and I didn't want to fall behind again. Nonetheless, though, I felt all my remaining energy drain from my legs over the space of a few kilometers on the tarmac road, and I realised that I would have to start looking out for a place to put the tent because otherwise I was in danger of being simply unable to walk any further.
Unfortunately, though, or so it seemed at the time, I couldn't find a suitable place because all the fields around me were full of sheep, and, even in my exhausted state, I was unwilling to camp in a sheep field after all the terrifying tick stories I'd read before the journey. I told myself that I'd camp as soon as I found a suitably flat spot that wasn't full of sheep, but it began to seem as though that place was never going to appear.
I began to wonder at that stage whether there was a hotel or B&B in Kirkmichael that would have accommodation, if I could get there. I also wondered whether there were taxis locally, and - if there were - whether it would be legitimate to get a taxi from the main road to the accommodation, as long as I got it to drop me back at the pickup point before continuing the following morning. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find answers to any of these interesting questions, though, because there'd been no reception on my mobile phone for hours.
I trudged on and on, stopping, now, every quarter or a mile or so for a 5 minute rest. My feet, legs and brain were screaming at me to stop walking, but there just didn't seem to be anywhere to lie down...
About 3 hours after the descent began I finally walked through the yard of some sort of farm, and emerged onto a slightly broader small road. About a kilometer later that road emerged onto the A924, and I was only 4km from Kirkmichael. I took off my pack and looked around me for a place to put the tent. For all the obvious reasons I don't like to camp next to a road, but on the other hand I didn't feel I had the strength left in me to go any further. There was also access to water here, and therefore I decided to try to hide the tent behind a mound of tall grass set about 20 feet back from the bend. I collected the pack, carried it over and got out the tent. As I was putting it up it became clear that the ground was very rutted, and only quite thinly covered over with relatively young grass, but by that time I was prepared to try to sleep anywhere! I unpacked into the tent, grabbed the Platypus and set off for the river, for water.
Unfortunately, and rather stomach churningly, there was some sort of thin foam floating around on top of the river. The river ran down from the direction of the farm - I'd seen a sign at the bottom of the road advertising fresh meat - and I wondered wehther a pollutant of some sort had perhaps entered it there. I stood around uncertainly, unsure about what to do, but in the end I decided that I'd need to use the water as I really did need to cook something to eat. I decided to use double rations of Puritabs, and boil the water for longer than usual.
I went back to the tent, added the Puritabs, waited a while and then boiled water for another kettley thing full of Beanfeast and Smash. By now it was 9.15pm, and I'd been on the road since 7.45am that morning. I tried to clear my mind of the idea that the water was unclean, and when dinner was ready I ate it as quickly as possible and then lay down to go to sleep.
I was also a bit worried that perhaps I shouldn't be camping there. A car had passed me a couple of times as I walked down from the farm to the road, and I was quite worried that if it drove past again, and spotted me, I might be asked to move on. It also crossed my mind that if a driver on the main road lost control on the bend then he or she might leave the road and drive over my tent! I realised that wasn't very likely to happen, though... and I was so tired that it wasn't very long before I was able to drop off.
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