A bit achey this morning but fortified by an excellent cooked breakfast. Curlew Cottage has a fine view over Loch Laggan, slightly marred by a pylon and power lines that are about to become my companions. Still this is a luxury B&B and I enjoy a spot of luxury for a change.
It is clear and looking to be hot again, and there is little prospect of me needing the fleece hat or fleece neck gaiter (a sort of scarf) I have packed. Little chance of needing the goretex jacket, overtrousers, or either fleece, come to that, but I currently have no use for them. The hat and neck gaiter though I use as extra padding for the rucksack straps.
And I need them. After yesterday I have filled up my flask with tea, filled my litre water bottle and taken a half litre one that was provided, so I have two litres altogether. The bottle that I refilled mine from is from Scottish water and comes with a ridiculous set of paranoid injuctions. Best before by date, use by three days after opening etc. For water!
The clouds of yesterday evening have pretty well disappeared. Just a wisp here and there. I walk down to town with Anna who is going to have a leisurly breakfast with the friends who also stayed with her last night, before they head off for the Knoydart Festival.
I have a tough day ahead of me and the sound of driving over to Mallaig to catch a fishing boat across to Inverie to listen to some music in the sunshine sounds immensely appealing. Dragging my heavy pack over a hill, rather less so.
But that is what I have in store. And at least the day is shaping up to be beautiful. Most of all, I could be stuck in a London completely taken over by that bloody royal wedding.
I get the bus and ask if they drop at the commando monument. “Not officially,” the driver says with a wink. Soon I am headed out along the same road that the policeman brought me down to Fort William last night.
I get off the bus at a Euston bathed in dawn light, having got up at 4.30. England has been toasting over Easter and the warm sunny weather looks set to continue for the second long bank holiday weekend on the trot.
I didn't have to do this leg at all. The idea of this thing is to be able to say that I have walked every step of the way from my house in Islington to my mum's in Stornoway. It doesn't really have to be in sequence, though that is more satisfying. And I have already done one small section out of sequence when I plugged the Hathersage to Edale gap. I don't have to do this because I have done it before. More than once in fact. The first time was when my mum walked The West Highland Way and I met up with her in Glencoe to walk with her for the final day. Some years later I was on a winter meet with the London Mountaineering Club and did it again. And a year or so ago I went from Kinlochleven, up the West Highland way for a spell before branching off to climb up and over the Mamore ridge and then down into Glen Nevis.
As I have not got it together to sort a map out and the last few stages have been recognised bits of the West Highland Way (and because the streetmap page I linked in the comments did not work properly) I thought I would put in a link to the West Highland Way.
I joined the Way in Crianlarich, walked to Tyndrum,
then from Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy.
From Bridge of Orchy I walked to Kingshouse (Glencoe)
and from Kingshouse to Kinlochleven.
Finally I walked from Kinlochleven to Fort William though I have not posted that section at the time of writing this.
Maps of all these sections can be seen here: http://www.walkinginscotland.org/westhighlandwaymaps.html
Hope that helps.
No rush to get up at all today as I am right on my route and it is a short day. Kingshouse has turned out to be comfortable if a bit shabby, but at £30.00 for a double room with a great veiw of the Buchaille and an en suite bath to soak in last night I am not complaining. The £30 does not include breakfast but I have promised myself I will get a cooked breakfast. But when I go down to the dining room and see the prices my innate meanness kicks in and I sneak back upstairs to breakfast on hot-cross buns and tea, as I watch a deer in the little patch of forestry in front of the hotel.
It is January the fifth and I step off the train to a very different Bridge of Orchy to the one I left two months ago. The sleeper service pulls out as I leave, headed north, the way I have come from. There is some snow on the ground and much more on the hills but what is coming down is more like sleet drizzle.
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