Straloch to Alyth
(19.5 miles/665 metres ascent)
Happily I was wrong, though, and the rain did indeed blow off as soon as I started packing my things together. On the other hand, it was freezing, and my fingers were painfully cold as I wiped down the tent and poles before packing them away. I looked forward to moving on soon and getting into my lovely Buffalo mittens.
Soon enough I was loaded up again, and by 8.30am I was walking along the road towards Kirkmichael, bemittened and hatted against the cold morning air. I was back in long trousers too, although I hoped it might be possible to unzip the bottoms later on if the sun decided to re-emerge. Within a short distance of my camping spot I passed a couple of really lovely looking B&Bs, and I couldn't help wondering whether they'd have had vacancies if I'd taken a chance and dragged myself along the road the night before. I was happy enough now, though, and the pain in my feet seemed to have improved considerably overnight.
I pressed on along the road, and at 9.30am arrived in Kirkmichael. It was a small and pretty village, but the best thing about it, from my point of view, was the utterly wonderful and award-winning Kirkmichael Village Stores and Coffee Shop, where I was able to sit down for a coffee and a cheese, pickle and salad roll, spend 30 minutes on the internet checking my email and deleting spam and buy 2 more rolls to take with me, yet more tissues, a bag of organic apricots, 2 litres of fresh water and a flask full of coffee! There were all sorts of amazing things in the shop that I really wouldn't expect to have found in such a small place: mung beans, miso paste, a whole range of dried organic fruit, a good selection of contemporary fiction, a cashpoint machine and a Post Office were amongst them. Most impressive!
I spent about 40 minutes at the stores, and then set off to find the Cateran Trail. I'd never heard of it when initially planning my route, and had noticed no reference to it on the map, but my vetter, Colin, had drawn it to my attention, because part of it runs from Kirkmichael to Alyth. The whole trail runs for 60 miles through the Perthshire Highlands, starting from Blairgowrie and then going through Glen Isla, up the Spittal of Glenshee, down to Kirkmichael and then to Bridge of Cally.
An elderly woman was leaving the stores at the same time as me, and she stopped to ask where I was walking. It turned out that she was a keen walker too, and so she was able to point me towards the trail. She was almost 80, but lived up a steep hill and appeared to have considerably less of a problem than I did in walking up it :-)
The walk over to Bridge of Cally was - once again - lovely. The sheep were noticeably more relaxed than those I'd passed earlier, and for the first time on the whole walk I managed to pass a field of sheep which didn't leap up in alarm and sprint bleating away in the opposite direction!
The stiles seemed to have been designed by giants, though: the gaps between the rungs were so wide that I could barely scramble to the top, and I found the drop on the other side more challenging than the awkward step on Striding Edge...
At one stage the trail passed along a sunny terrace on the side of the hill, where birds towards the top of the hill on my right seemed to be engaged in excited conversation with those lower down the hill to the left. From time to time as I walked I'd see one flying rapidly up or down in front of me, sometimes crossing with another travelling in the opposite direction and presumably intending to carry on the conversation face to face.
A little further along I came across a long line of sheep apparently following the trail, and so I tagged onto the end of the flock for a while.
My feet began to hurt again as I pressed on down towards Bridge of Cally, but I passed through a particularly lovely little village on the way.
On the final descent towards Bridge of Cally I passed a couple of hikers walking up the hill towards me. They were friendly and clearly felt a wish to offer some encouragement, possibly when they saw me creeping down the hill under the weight of such a large looking rucksack! They told me that Bridge of Cally was no more than about a mile away, and they were right. I'd said a few prayers and recited a couple of incantations in the hope that there might be a hotel or pub there where I could sit down with a drink and possibly get something to eat, and indeed there was, in the form of the lovely Bridge of Cally Hotel, where, despite what must have been my surprising and probably slightly disconcerting appearance, I was greeted with a warm smile.
It must have been about 2pm when I arrived. I settled into a corner of the bar, and over the course of the next hour I drank two G&Ts (yum!) and ate a bowl of excellent home-made green lentil soup. I wrote up a bit of my notebook, and planned to leave by 3pm, as some 8 or 9 further miles still lay ahead of me to Alyth.
There was another reminder of just how tenuous my grasp on the fundamentals of navigation really are when I managed to get lost in the hotel, trying to find my way back from the loo to the bar... It must have been a journey of at least 15-20 metres, involving passage through one doorway and a short stroll along a corridor. Fortunately the kind woman who'd provided my soup found me wandering, confused, at the wrong end of the corridor, and realised what the problem was. "Are you lost?", she said, and pointed me through the doorway that led straight back to my seat :-)
I stuck to my plan to leave by 3pm, as I didn't want the day to drag on dispiritingly until late in the evening, in the way that the previous day had done. The walk was beginning to feel like pretty hard work, now. The 14 miles I'd walked 4 days earlier, on roads from Rannoch Station to Carie, had been harder on my feet than I'd anticipated, and they seemed to have left a permanent impression. My feet had begun to grow tired and then painful at some stage in the afternoon on every subsequent day, and the longer the walk continued the earlier in the day my painful feet were beginning to set in. It wasn't a blister problem - I still had the remainder of the small blister I'd drained in Kinlochleven, but there hadn't been any more - my poor feet were simply tired and bruised, and I now remembered very clearly just how sore they'd become in the course of the Pennine Way the previous autumn. Fortunately I wasn't yet anywhere near as sore as that, though.
Even though I'd now been walking for 11 days I was still passing interesting flowers that I'd not seen on the more westerly part of the journey.
I surprised a little calf standing alone in a field...
...and soon after that I was making my way along a narrow road on a hill with banks of glorious gorse to the right and the left.
I passed another interesting flower that I'd never noticed before, and after that another bunch of pretty red campion.
Unknown and red campion 
As I eventually made my way along the road and down the hill towards the outskirts of Alyth, it began to feel as though the town would never arrive. I was almost killed at one stage by a large, kerb-hugging jeep of some description on a blind bend, but eventually the road levelled out, some buildings appeared on the right and I realised that I was almost there. I passed an absolutely stunning blaze of glorious, red flowers just before the road swung right to go down into Alyth itself. At the time I thought it was a gorse, but looking again I think it must be broom as it isn't spiky.
Broom 
The outskirts of Alyth were so pretty that I expected to find another lovely village of the sort I'd been passing through all the way from Shiel Bridge. I was a little disappointed, though, as the centre of Alyth, and the road running down towards the A926 where the campsite is located, were unattractive, and to me they looked a little depressed.
What was attractive, though, was the overwhelmingly heady smell emerging from a chippy in the centre of the town! I walked past on my way towards the campsite, inhaling the delectable fumes deep into my lungs. The smell was so enticing that I almost stopped to eat right then and there, but when I'm camping I can't really relax until I've chosen my spot and got the tent up, and so I decided I'd return once I had everything in place.
When I realised just how far it was from the shops to the campsite, though, I experienced a reluctant change of heart. It must have been getting on for a mile - 3/4, at least - and I really didn't feel able - or willing, anyway - to trudge an extra mile and a half on top of the 19.5 miles I'd already walked that day. I hoped there might be somewhere to eat on the campsite, but decided that if there wasn't then I had plenty of Beanfeast and Smash left in my rucksack to keep me going.
I knew the Five Roads Caravan Park was meant to be there, because I'd found it on the internet when I was planning my accommodation, but I saw no signs for it at all, and eventually rang just to check they were open. Fortunately they were, though, and at about 7.15pm I arrived to find a clean, attractive-looking site. I was a little taken aback to be charged £8 for one night - enquiries revealed that it would only have been £1 more for two people with a car, which struck me as a bit mean to solo backpackers - but there was no-where else to stay, and so I paid up, walked across to the nice, flat grassy field and put up the tent.
After that I went over to the shower block for a very welcome shower, my first in 4 days! The water was warm and the shower refreshing, and I felt a great deal less grubby when I'd towelled myself down, even though I still had to get back into one of my two baselayers, neither of which was particularly clean.
There was actually a pub called The Blackbird Inn right next to the campsite, and so I gathered together my money, book, notebook and map, and made my way over there at about 8.15pm. I went in to what must presumably have been the lounge, because I could hear loud male voices from an adjoining room that I think must have been the bar, and ordered a bottle of Magners cider. Bliss... As the barmaid bent down to get the bottle I asked if I could look at the menu, but I was told that they'd finished serving food at 8pm! I could hardly believe it... I explained that I'd walked almost 20 miles with a rucksack and tent, and asked whether there wasn't anything at all that I could have, but again I was told they'd finished serving, so there was nothing available. That was quite a blow after such a long walk, and so I cancelled my drink and decided I'd have to walk back into town after all. Now that I'd psyched myself up to expect a drink and something yummy involving chips, I'd rather lost my appetite for Beanfeast and Smash potato...
On the way back into town I passed a grocery store, and so I went in to ask whether there was either a restaurant or pub around that served nice food. The woman I spoke to was very friendly, but said she wasn't sure there'd be anywhere open for food on a Monday night. She asked if I'd seen the chippy, and I told her I had, but I explained that I was very tired and would really like to be able to sit down with a drink in order to eat my meal. Besides which, it was actually pretty cold outside! It seemed very surprising to me that a place as large as Alyth might be unable to provide visitors with food and a drink at 8.30pm on a Monday evening, but for some reason that appeared to be the reality.
Fortunately, salvation was at hand in the form of the Alyth Hotel. I went in to find that it was open, friendly and serving both food and drink. Phew!... I ordered a pint of cider - they didn't have Magners, but nobody's perfect... - and sat down happily at a table to read through the menu. By now I was starving, and so I chose cheesy nachos with guacamole and salad, followed by breaded haddock and chips. Deep joy! :-) There was plenty of room at the table too, and so I was able to spread out my things, dig out a couple of Neurofen for my aching feet and legs and settle down to write up a bit more of my notebook, read a bit more of my book and consult the map, to consider the next couple of days ahead.
The nachos came and were both enormous and lovely, and then the fish and chips were even better! I think the kitchen must have decided I was starving - possibly after I ate every single one of the enormous pile of nachos - because they sent out enough food to have served a small family, including two large pieces of fish! I managed to eat most of it, though, and then I had a glass of Laphroaig and a cup of lovely coffee.
Looking over the map I began to worry a bit about Wednesday's walk from Easter Lednathie to Edzell. It was going to be 21 miles, and I really didn't want to feel as sore and exhausted as I had over the last few days again. I knew I had to get there, though, because I'd made plans to meet up with Jean in Edzell, and I'd been looking forward to doing that since we'd gone our separate ways just after Tomdoun, some 8 days earlier. We had a fish and chips plan in place, and I'd been fantasizing about it on a fairly regular basis for quite some time now.
I was also beginning to feel a bit lonely, as I'd not really had a conversation with anyone since my chat with Jock in the bar at the King's House 5 days earlier, and I'd not had any significant conversation with a Challenger since chatting with Willie on the walk into Fort William a whole week before. I decided to play things by ear tomorrow, but the walk to Easter Lednathie was only going to be about 15 miles and I decided I might try to walk a little further, if I felt up to it at the end of the day.
I settled up at the Alyth Hotel, and began to walk back to the campsite. I'd recommend the hotel to anyone needing food or drink in Alyth. There was a reference at one stage to there being new owners, and I don't know how the hotel might have been in the past, but it was certainly very warm, friendly and welcoming when I was there.
When I got back to the campsite I popped into the little laundry room to take a look around. I'd really have liked to have washed some of my kit, but I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to dry it, since I didn't have a token for the tumble dryer. I was also concerned that there wouldn't be anywhere for me to hang it up, and so I decided I'd better just press on with what I had, and make the best of things. I went back to the tent, snuggled down in my sleeping bag and dropped off to sleep.
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