Another beautiful day in paradise and the last leg of our walk began around 9 am this morning as we left Kinlochleven for a sharp 300 m climb onto Lairigmor. Once again we forgot our packed lunches! This time at least we ordered them, just forgot to pick them up. Didn't bother to run back down the hill to get them and preferred instead to rely on our copius supplies of water, bounty bars and jaffa cakes which proved to be sufficient. The moor itself was relatively easy walking once we climbed up the hill and we made a good pace along the old military road for about 7 miles. After a brief snack on the jaffa cakes, we pushed on for Glen Nevis and were rewarded by excellent views of Ben Nevis on the way down. Malcolm and I were thinking of trying to walk the Ben today as well, but once we realized it's an extra 5-7 hours on top of the 6 hour hike to Fort William we decided to leave it for another day. For me, that other day will come tomorrow as I'll give it a shot. Our route to Glen Nevis was by this time quite straightforward and we all felt like quite accomplished hikers by this stage. Following a pleasant walk down through the woods, the trail pops out on to the A82 at the bottom of the Glen and from there it was a 20 min victory march into Fort William. We ended the day just after 3:30 pm. For once we got to our destination well before 7 pm! All of us were mighty relieved to see our guest house for the night just meters away from the finish of the walk and we duly staggered to our digs and checked in. A few celebratory drinks were then consumed and a nice dinner at Brown's restaurant in FW. We were soon brought back to reality though, as we watched Englands woeful display against Algeria - it's nice to know that the real world hasn't changed much in our absence. The whole week has been quite fantastic - I wasn't sure how we'd all hold up to the challenge and there have been a few hairy moments along the way, but we're all feeling great at this point and daring to dream of WHW2020!
I had a great week in Scotland with Dad and Dunc. It seemed to have everything for me. Family, catching up with what was going on in our own busy but individual lives, sharing the latest news with each other and that of the rest of our families. The time just passed by so quickly and I keep coming back to the blog and the photos to give myself another "fix" of the WHW.
ReplyDeleteWhat kept it together were the long days on the trail and the really funny moments we shared along the way as well as some great evenings.
I can't wait to tackle the WHW with our children and Alexia, sooner rather than later!