14:51 miles (11.5 miles officially)
Wanting to get the nine o’clock ferry in preparation for another long day, it is a bit annoying that breakfast at Ardlui Hotel doesn’t begin until eight. This means that, to be on the safe side, I need to brush my teeth before brekkie, because my suitcase needs to be packed and in the lobby before I come down to eat.
As I’m writing this after the fact, I can’t remember what was eaten where, but I do remember that the breakfasts, generally, were okay. Some had more variety than others – The Bridge of Orchy Hotel had a proper bowl of decent full fat Greek style yogurt for example, instead of the zero percent fat mini tubs available elsewhere. The weirdly titled ‘potato scone’ that is often brought out as a Scottish staple, is not at all scone-like, nor all that potatoey. It is a flat, fried quadrant that isn’t easy to cut and a bit greasy to eat.
My habit that is forming as I go along is to do a small bowl of fruit and yogurt along with a sprinkling of seeds and nuts that I’d brought from home, and then to have choice bits from the cooked breakfast, and then to purloin either a croissant or a toasted jam sandwich for one of my snacks. Julie, on the other hand, seems to require the cooked breakfast only every few days. She and her husband Simon have brought a variety of snacks for the day that keep her going but she is invariably ready to tuck in to the dinners in the evening.
The ferry requires two journeys to take us and several other people to the other side: only Brian and I are able to squeeze onto the first round, so we’re able to chat further about an idea that had been thrown out there a day or so before.
While in Glasgow, I’d come across a book in a charity shop called ‘The Highland High Way’. It describes a route that runs alongside our walk but bags a few Munros along the way. I have never ‘bagged’ a Munro, and I’d posited the idea of some of us going up and over Ben Lomond from Rowardennan and meeting the rest in the middle of their walk in Inversnaid. Brian and Julie were up for it, but we couldn’t see the path on the OS Maps, so we didn’t in the end. But Brian suggested coming back for a few days with our partners. They would sketch the stunning scenery and drink wine, and we would go up Ben Lomond and have a wee dram at the top from Brian’s hip flask.
Dates and details need to be sorted out, but we will make it happen.
As the others join us, we climb up and over a small hill into Inverannan, or at least into the campsite by there, which has loos that we can use, in order to delay the need for the next wild wee. There is a little shop as well but no good ice cream. Since day one, there has been a dearth of decent ice cream places, and Val, who thinks, quite rightly, that a holiday isn’t a holiday without good ice cream, is feeling the effects.
Our path takes us away from Loch Lomond finally, to a mixture of woodland, fields and moorland as we make steady progress, often on old military roads, via Crianlarich to the Bridge of Orchy. We don’t go into the village but we come to the crossroads that marks, roughly, the halfway point of the West Highland Way.
Highlights are the Falls of Falloch (which isn’t quite as impressive as we’d anticipated but has cooling waters), and finding some possible Robert the Bruce battle sites, which are now only visible by the description boards.
One of the many people we see regularly along the way, is a man who is camping and carrying nearly all his food provisions for the journey, as well as his camping gear and clothes. At the Falls, he’s steps barefoot onto the stones leading to the falls to fill up his water bottles. There are a lot of people walking with their full luggage – some camp and some stay in more solid abodes, but it really is quite awe-inspiring to see them carrying everything. They won’t have packed as much as I have into my large suitcase, but I know I haven’t packed very efficiently, judging by the way I am having a near hernia every time I take the blasted thing up and down the stairs in the hotels.
Tyndrum Lodges are solid walled rooms near a big campsite. After the last group stop only a couple of miles from our end point, Val and Ian shoot off ahead of us as she is determined to use a real loo and explore the ice cream situation. When we arrive however, she is biting on a Feast, so there is no decent ice cream here either. But there are baths, which are always a joy to end on.
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