The Great Glen Way Pt 5

The following morning after showering and breakfasting communally, I mean to say, breakfasting together, not showering; we did that separately, (those of us who chose to shower that week…) We set of in cars for Alt Sigh, this is a wee bit past where we (sorry, they) finished the previous day, as I’ve already hinted, we’re not purists about our route, the three miles between Invermoriston and Alt Sigh (where there is a Scottish Youth Hostel that seems never to be open) is just forestry track, there isn’t anything to look at except trees and the back pack of the person in front of you.

It’s still ten miles to Drumnadrochit with some decent views over Loch Ness and up and down the Great Glen. This section of the route starts on forestry road, then changes to foot path then onto tarmac at a place called Grotaig, you can get a car along to here coming from Drum if you want. You climb up fairly steadily from Alt Sigh, up to 1000 feet in places but the reward is in the views, the route before Invermoriston only gets to about 200 feet and you’re constantly surrounded by trees. Don’t get excited about seeing the fabled Castle Urquhart from the Great Glen Way, you’re led to believe you can, unfortunately you can’t because there is a hill in the way. You can stop in Drum and walk back, it’s about £7 to get in; we decided not to bother.

I’ll be perfectly honest at this point, yesterday, we had a cooked breakfast in the Glen Café in Drum, I should have said, the results from our study on the merits of said meal were inconclusive; we had no choice but to have another one that day while the others walked towards us. I can reveal, the Glen Café’s cooked breakfast is up there with the best of them, I think what marks it out for special consideration is the inclusion of fried bread instead of toast, I mean to say; fried bread? I can’t think of any food stuff more satisfying than fried bread, especially when attached to a cooked breakfast, not since spending time in Northern Ireland have I witnessed the inclusion of fried dough-based food stuff (soda bread in this case) with a cooked breakfast, or ‘fry’ as it’s called in those parts.

I could lie and say we felt guilty about our second cooked breakfast, but to be honest, we didn’t. To atone for our excess today and the day before, we decided to walk back towards the rest of the group from Drum. You might think this doesn’t sound so bad, but you’d be wrong. I remember when I was here last time, walking from East to West on that occasion, I’d walked out of Drum, there is a choice, you can either take the longer route to Clunebeg House then dog leg back up the hill to Woodend and avoid the arduous climb or you can just walk up the road to Woodend Cottage. By taking the direct route you’re saving on distance (about a mile, if that) but the direct route is vertical.

Ok, vertical is an exaggeration, but not much of one, the road zigzags up to around 750 feet, in places, for every foot forward you’re also going a foot upwards, its relentless, it just goes on and on. Again, I’m exaggerating, it doesn’t, it’s only about a mile distance wise but you feel every inch of it (as the actress said to the bishop) and no less fucked for your efforts, I swear to underline the horror of it. Last time I did it with a full rucksack, this time I had nothing and I nearly expired, and I’m not exaggerating about that.

Karma also paid us back for our selfish breakfast ways; we knew this would happen as well. No sooner had we got to Woodend Cottage, we sighted the rest of our group. We basically walked up a ball-breaking hill just to walk back down it again.

We all arrived back in Drumnadrochit, in various states of disrepair, I had to go and have a lie down while the others visited the Coop for some badly needed victuals (mostly wine, for those of an appropriate age of course…)

We’d already broken the good news about not camping that evening so we returned to the Loch Ness Holiday Park and our quaint little barrels by the loch, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, it was colder and while it wasn’t raining as such, a light mist hung in the air. During that day, Michael, (my colleague who whistles like a gibbon) visited the shops in Drum; he’d bought two novelty condoms so he could play a joke on his cabin mates (one of whom was Paul with the girl friend in St Andrew’s the other was 17 year old Finlay.) He was going to put one on each of their pillows with a note saying; ‘be careful, lol’.

These were novelty Loch Ness monster condoms with some pithy one liner on the packaging, you can probably imagine, although I totally understand if you choose not to bother. While paying for them, the lady behind the shop counter was heard to mutter something along the lines of; ‘Pshaw! You’re optimistic aren’t ya?’

Suffice to say, he was a bit miffed at the inference but then, you simply can’t buy that sort of thing and not have judgement passed, especially in a place as small as Drumnadrochit, they’re probably still talking about it now in the Glen Café over their cooked breakfasts.

That night (condoms not-with-standing) was a bit more subdued, the previous night had been a late one and the day had been tough, not in terms of distance but walking from the West, it was the first properly hilly section. We sat up for a while chatting in another micro cabin but soon dispersed for the evening, I have no idea if they used the Nessy condoms Michael so selflessly purchased, if they did, I do hope they were careful.

- lol.

Go to Pt 6 or have a rest and go here instead because I imagine you're fed up reading by now.

The Great Glen Way Pt 4

People are often confused about land rights in Scotland, England has a fairly healthy trespass law, Scotland on the other hand is different, this is why wheel clamping is illegal in Scotland and parking tickets issued by private companies can be ignored (yes, if you get a ticket and its not from a council warden, police warden of council representative, you can put it in the bin.) In Scotland, you can have reasonable access to land for camping and walking, so long as you’re not pitching your tent on someone’s patio of course, arguably for us, the fire we had at this campsite could be an aggravating factor, but by just being there, as long as you’re not causing anyone what could reasonably be called ‘alarm’, its fine for you to spend the night.

Several lorries, cars and other vehicles trundled past, refreshingly; no one came to shoe us away, we had a healthy warming fire and a slightly creepy night having as we did in the backs of our minds the fairy glen. With the weather taking a turn for the worse, this was to be the last night we’d spend out in the open, earlier that day we’d booked ourselves into these hobbit micro cabins on the banks of Loch Ness for the fourth night, because the weather was definitely getting worse.

That day was also going to be a short one, from the camp site to Invermoriston, a distance of eight miles, although you can cut a mile and a half off by not doing the annoying final dog leg into Invermoriston. While they walked we left cars in the car park and went on to Drumnadrochit to check a campsite at Borlum Bridge, it’s on the foot print map, in all the tourist brochures and signposted off the road. It is a little frustrating though when you have these so-called campsites advertising tent pitches when what they actually have is an open field (a sloping one at that,) no fire pits or indoor space to keep warm, I don’t know what people did in the countryside before the arrival of things like electricity and heat, after you’ve had your tea you can either stand around a freezing windswept field, stand in the toilets or just go to bed. Since the temperature was dropping and the general direction of Weatherly travel was toward rain, we decided not to camp out at Borlum but go into Drum and find out if there was another site in the area, ideally one in which we could set a fire or have some access to warmth.

If you like horses and have a motor home though, Borlum campsite is just the ticket.

We decided some might say selfishly, to conflate an enquiry about potential campsites with the consumption of a cooked breakfast, I can say where the Glen Café in Drumnadrochit fails in terms of info about local campsites; it makes up for with its fine all day breakfasts.

Eventually, with distended bellies we went back to Invermoriston, it was only midday. We were expecting to walk back towards the walking group but they’d already arrived in the village. It was still too early to check in to our Hobbit Microcabins, so we went back to Drum for some shopping.

The Hobbit Microcabins sit in their own ‘village’ in the Loch Ness Holiday Park, we were given keys by the elderly site steward, thoughtfully they’d given us three cabins furthest away from any other customers, obviously knowing in advance the Scout Movement’s weakness for indulging wild late night parties.

All the cabins were named after characters or places from the Hobbit books, I haven’t seen any of the films so I have no idea what it all meant, they’re just random words to me that may or may not have meaning in the real world, I think some might have been from the Harry Potter series of books, I didn’t care, the sun was out it was early afternoon, the tents were drying nicely and we had somewhere warm to sit, albeit inside a ten foot diameter keg but it was a warm keg.

I can’t recommend these cabins highly enough, we used them on the West Highland Way in Kinlochleven, they’re cheap (£16 per head) and comfortable, these cabins on Loch Ness had fridges but no flat screen TV’s or microwaves as sported by the Kinlochleven variety, I remember watching From Russia With Love in my cabin, on the TV obviously, not the microwave.

Which is essentially how I’ve come to be sitting in a Hobbit Microcabin typing this while overly warm air wafts toward me from the fan heater attached to the inside of what, as I said, looks like a cross between a sauna and a Wendy house.

We sat up that night chatting and drinking, (those of us of an appropriate age of course.) When you spend time with young people the topic of conversation is usually far ranging, we’d spoken about this before, but one of our group; a seventeen year old who we’ll call Paul because that is name; told us a story. His girlfriend is a student at St Andrew’s University, he was up visiting one weekend and decided to stay over, he sent a text to his Dad asking if this was ok, his Dad, not being entirely unplugged from reality knew the potential out come of this replied with the following sage advice: Aye, be careful, lol.

As you might imagine this became an oft visited topic and unfortunately we’re still talking about it now, a rash of pictures have appeared across face book featuring famous moments of peril (one including the Titanic setting sale from Cork) captioned: Be careful, lol. There are many others, not limited to a depiction of Adam and Eve picking an apple from the tree of temptation in the Garden of Eden, (I’m quite proud of that one…)

As you might imagine, walking is a fairly mundane activity, most of us do it most days. When you’re walking a lot miles in a day it can get a bit boring, the group get along well though and fill the time with all sorts of chat, sometimes they sing, the most prevalent song being the theme from the newly released Bond film ‘Skyfall’. That was quickly changed in honour of Michael (a fellow leader) falling in to the barge at Kytra to ‘Mikefall’ with new words to suit. Another thing we realised was that when Michael whistled, he looked like a gibbon, obviously you had to be there but he did, it was actually a bit uncanny, every time he whistles it is now accompanied (if we’re there) with gusts of laughter, I suppose its just one of those things.

We sat up till fairly late talking about this and that but eventually retired.

Go to Pt 5

The Great Glen Way Pt 3

The walk between Laggan and Fort Augustus is a pleasant one, it’s completely flat following as it does the canal for a spell then the banks of Loch Oich then a bit more canal into Fort Augustus, the total distance is about ten miles.

I and another leader had driven on to find a camp site for the third night (opting to be indoors later in the week due to colder weather being forecast.) We managed to find a wild campsite about a mile and half beyond Fort Augustus, no picnic table or ducks but enough flat ground to pitch tents and an old fire circle, we weren’t the first to camp here it seemed. The ground was soft and mossy, although if it rained we’d probably all end up needing a life boat but there wasn’t much choice, it did turn out to be a decent camp site, if a little noise due to forestry trucks thundering by 15 metres away on the forestry road.

The days walk however was good, I walked this section last year from Fort Augustus to Laggan and found it to be very nice indeed, the canal tow path was still quite novel coming from Inverness (you don’t use any canal tow path between the outskirts of Inverness and Fort Augustus.) If you’re walking from Fort William though, it gets a bit boring. With that in mind we decided to chance our arm a little, we met up with the rest of the group just past Kytra Lock about two miles West of Fort Augustus and had some lunch. While sitting there we were joined by the Fingal of Caledonia, the 39 metre 190 ton barge-cum-hotel (and one of the other purveyors of booze on the canal if you happened to be a paying customer.)

I suppose it was actually bad timing, although not for us. Davey, the barge skipper seemed friendly and possibly amiable enough to let us onboard for a wee boat trip along the last two miles to Fort Augustus. I sent up one of our more attractive members to enquire but he wasn’t assertive enough, this is the problem with the youth of today, so easily fobbed off. Not so with me however, not being overly concerned with walking every inch of the Great Glen Way, I begged & simpered for us to be let aboard, I said it would add to our experience and in any case, we’re scouts… After securing agreement from the guy who was leading the coast-to-coasters, who’d just arrived, Davey invited us all aboard. I think this is where the timing was an issue, as we climbed aboard (Michael, one of the leader team fairly threw himself aboard landing on his face) the people who were actually paying to have the boat shadow them along the route got a bit voluble about this new arrangement, I don’t really blame them, basically there they were walking while we pinched their (probably quite expensive) ride.

We were told not to go downstairs into the body of the boat which seemed fair enough, the sun was out so the conditions were perfect for a short cruise on deck. Davey invited us into the wheel house and allowed me to take the wheel which was as interesting as it was disconcerting. He said not even the paying customers got to do this, I know some folk buy fast cars to make up for other imagined (or real) short comings, what you really want is a 100mtr barge and a slender canal in which to insert it. We didn’t crash and Davey said my skills were not inconsiderable, even although we were only doing about 5mph, you’d have to be spectacularly slow witted to crash, not even I fill that criteria. That said, with no way of knowing if the wheel was centred it took constant concentration and small corrections to keep the boat in the middle of the canal.

It’s for this type of thing we do these daft walking trips, last year on the West highland Way, we hired two random guys who were sitting the Rowerdennan Hotel bar (who may have been slightly inebriated) to transport some of us down Loch Lomond to Inversnaid. They claimed to have boats, what we got was a tiny wee speed boat; you could have had a moderately spacious bath in it. They crammed bags and bodies on board (I forget who all went on the boat) I sent my pal Sheridan with them because I know he’s a strong swimmer and could take the blame if things went wrong, (I’m joking, I take these things very seriously indeed, your honour…) We watched as this tiny overloaded craft nosed its way out onto Loch Lomond and wondered if we’d ever see them alive again, we did of course, after the other guy had to go out in his considerably larger speed boat to rescue the bathtub because it ran out of fuel.

Anyway the point I’m trying to make (with out incriminating myself on grounds of negligence) is that we like to mix things up a wee bit, it’s more about the journey than some purist walking experience. With that in mind, we can’t thank Davey and the Fingal Cruise crowd enough for giving us a new experience and added quirk to our week.

So it was that we hove to (oh the nautical banter) at Fort Augustus with the eminently more capable Davey at the wheel, we said our good byes, although we bumped into each other several times over the next few days, and wandered into FA to get some fish and chips.

FA is handy; it’s about bang in the middle distance wise and a good place to resupply if you’re walking unaided. We reloaded our water supply and bought food as required for the next couple of days. We’d been living on a mixture of boil in the bag and dried foods (the dreaded pot or super noodle options.) If you are walking unaided or with a youth group as we were, its important to know that there are no shops between Neptune’s Ladder (4 miles in) and FA (34 miles in,) there is the floating pub at Laggan which is fine for beer and a burger (and not overly expensive either) but if you are cooking your own, you need to carry it in from the start point. Like us, if you have no shame, you can just leave your young charges outside in the cold while you sit inside and push food and beer into your face as we did, (and horrible it was too…)

There are hotels, B&B’s and plenty pubs to choose from, the chip shop is good as well, everything is cooked from fresh, the wait is well worth it and if your order is big enough, he won’t charge for the sauce sachets, (it’s the little things.)

If you elected to purchase a key to the canal toilets, they are at the top of the lock complex outside of town, there is no campsite here though, I can understand the local hostelries and B&B’s would prefer walkers were directed to their establishments, but it would be helpful if they were actually open. Last year I stayed in a B&B called the Abbey, ran by a gay couple (there’s a sitcom in there somewhere.) In the morning I had a Dutch Bouncer for breakfast which was nice, and then I had some thing to eat. I’m joking, the Dutch Bouncer was my breakfast, no really, it’s a Dutch thing obviously, not a brawny nightclub doorman from the Netherlands on his holidays. (I don’t think there was any brawny Dutchmen there at all, there were some brawny looking shinty players in the pub the night before right enough, but they weren’t on the breakfast menu at the B&B.)

I digress, basically this is (or was) a dish served at chucking out time in Dutch pubs and nightclubs, essentially a couple of slices of white bread with a slice of ham and cheese toped with fried eggs. I have to say, this is much more agreeable way to be informed of the impending closure of the pub or club you’re awarding your custom to rather than being told by a thick-necked twat in a puffa jacket to fuck off.

Alas, no Bouncers this time round, we were camping out this evening. I took my car and the gear to the campsite we’d found while the others walked the short distance from FA, I was going to have a wee nap in the car but decided to put their tents up instead on account of them being a bit wet from the previous night. The site we’d found was just off the A82, there is a forestry car park with an unpronounceable Gaelic name (Allt Na Criche) through which the Great Glen Way passes, the site we found was about a quarter of mile further on. While exploring earlier in the day we got caught by a forestry worker, sometimes they don’t like folk driving their cars on forestry roads and there are signs posted saying not to, although I tend to ignore them. I drive a green four wheel drive (now with a bloody great big dent in the side) which looks like a forestry vehicle anyway; I managed to blag my way past him by behaving as if I belonged there. He gave us some directions to a forestry office so we could ask about camp sites but we didn’t bother, sometimes asking elicits a no.

Go to Pt 4