| The West Highland Way | |
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The wrong table ....
We woke feeling surprisingly fresh and, if not exactly athletic, then at least serviceably restored for the day ahead. I ached in a number of places I had not previously realised were on speaking terms with the rest of my body, but the general verdict was encouraging: yes, things were sore, but no, nothing appeared to have actually dropped off overnight. More importantly, I felt entirely capable of another fifteen miles and was convinced that today would offer a gentler prospect than the last. After all, we were due to walk along the shores of Loch Lomond. A lakeside stroll, surely. How hard could that possibly be?
The dining room at the Oak Tree Inn, however, presented the first challenge of the day in the form of a complete absence of visible table numbers. Any guidance notwithstanding, and acting on the perfectly reasonable assumption that breakfast seating might operate under the same free-market principles as the previous evening’s dinner, we chose the same table we had occupied the night before, largely because it gave excellent views over Loch Lomond, where ducks drifted lazily and little boats rocked gently in the morning light. Colin, uncertain about the procedure for acquiring orange juice and perhaps wary of asking questions before full consciousness had set in, wandered off in search of it, leaving me gazing out over the water in contented ignorance.
Then the formidable lady in charge of breakfast descended. She approached with the purposeful tread of a woman who could, if required, separate men from their sausages, and fixed me with a frown.
“Cullen?” she grunted.
“What?” I replied, more startled than helpful.
“Cullen?” she repeated, with no softening of either expression or delivery.
I stared at her blankly. The word meant nothing to me in the context supplied. Was she asking if I wanted cooking? Calling for Colin? Warning me about culling? She simply stood there waiting, with the air of someone whose patience had long ago emigrated.
“Cullen?” she said once more, this time jabbing a finger in my direction.
And then the penny dropped.
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Balmaha |
She gave a tut that managed to imply not only disappointment but also some broader condemnation of my entire administrative usefulness, then flapped a hand toward a nearby table.
“Och, they’ve taken your table. You’ll have to move.”
I assumed that the mysterious Cullens had colonised our designated breakfast station and were now sitting where we ought to have been sitting, which raised the perfectly reasonable question of why they could not be the ones asked to move, but this was clearly not a morning in which logic would be allowed to interfere with catering. So I obediently shifted one table along while she bustled away, apparently rearranging the population of the dining room around the rogue Cullens rather than confronting them directly. I found myself wondering whether a full domino effect of dislodged guests was now rippling out through the breakfast room, all because Mr and Mrs Cullen had sat where they fancied.
During breakfast we met the petite hiker from the Beech Tree Inn again. By now she clearly regarded us as fellow members of the West Highland Way fraternity and approached our table with the cheerful familiarity of someone who had already shared a trail, a rain shower, and a mutual underestimation of distance. She looked ready for the off, poles in hand and that brisk, compact air about her which suggested she had probably already completed half a day mentally before the rest of us had buttered our toast.
“So where are you two staying tonight, then?” she asked.
“A place called the Inversnaid Lodge, I think,” said Colin.
She smiled ruefully. “What — you mean the place I couldn’t get into?”
This made us feel faintly guilty, as though we had elbowed an old lady aside for the last deckchair, but she seemed philosophical about it.
“Oh well,” she said. “It’s the Inversnaid Bunkhouse for me. Still, looks like it’s going to be a nice day for walking, thank God.”
We agreed that it did indeed look promising. The light outside had a different quality to it altogether — brighter, cleaner, and carrying at least the rumour of sunshine. She gathered up her poles. “Anyway, I’d better get going. Want to make an early start. Best of luck for today — see ya.”
A minute later she strode past our window with the same purposeful clicking gait, moving north as if pursued by a timetable only she could see.
“You’ve got to give her credit,” I said. “Doing the whole thing solo like that. I’m not sure I’d have that sort of confidence if I were tackling it as a lone woman.”
We take the high road AND the low road ....
As our lone hiker had predicted, the day looked full of promise. The forecast, for once, was on our side for the next twenty-four hours, and after the bruising efforts of the previous day we felt an almost indecent eagerness to get going and bank some easy miles. Outside the inn we loitered for a while among Balmaha's little waterfront scene — ducks waddling importantly about the shore, yachts bobbing in the marina, the broad water of Loch Lomond shining with morning calm. The air had that cool, wholesome freshness peculiar to Scottish mornings by water, crisp enough to sharpen the senses yet gentle enough to suggest that perhaps the world, on this particular day, did not mean us any harm.
I waved the camcorder vaguely at some attractive scenery and recorded a brief update on our progress so far and our plans for the day, while Colin stood just off-camera heckling me about whether we were technically on day one or day two of the walk, since our Glasgow start had muddled the arithmetic. It was a fair point. We seemed already to have entered that peculiar state common to walking holidays, in which time, mileage, geography and breakfast all begin slipping subtly out of normal alignment.
We left Balmaha by the road, only briefly, before turning off onto a path that entered stands of Scots pine and began tracing the shoreline of the loch. This, I assumed, would be the pleasant, level lakeside ramble of my earlier imagining. Naturally, it immediately turned uphill. The path twisted through the trees in a series of steep little turns that had us climbing almost from the outset, and although the top rewarded us with a handsome view south over the water, ten minutes later we had lost all that painstakingly acquired height and were once again at the loch’s edge, as if the path were merely having a laugh.
After several more such switchbacks we came to a tiny, secluded beach — one of those little hidden inlets that seem to exist chiefly to make postcards look plausible. Miniature waves lapped against the shingle, trees leaned right down to the water, and their roots reached gingerly into the loch like bathers testing the temperature with an unwilling toe. Across the water Ben Lomond rose magnificently, the southernmost of the Munro's, lifting its broad mass three thousand feet above the loch while the morning sun laid patches of green and russet across its slopes. At the edge of the water I found a piece of pink quartz, smooth and shining, and pocketed it to take home for Sue, taking a photograph as well so that I would remember the exact little cove from which this romantic geological offering had been stolen.
For much of the morning we continued along the shore through old woodland, and it was a deeply agreeable sort of walking, the path winding between mossy trunks and fern-fringed banks while secluded bays kept opening up to reveal flashes of cobalt water and Ben Lomond standing guard across the loch. The woodland felt ancient and gently secretive, full of filtered sunlight and birdsong, and every now and then the path would swing close enough to the shore for us to hear the water licking against stones. One particularly narrow stretch, hemmed in by lush ferns, suddenly lunged upwards in an alarmingly steep climb that
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Loch Lomond Shoreline |
We reached Rowardennan and stopped for lunch, where I discovered that leaping from the roadside down onto the beach was now an operation requiring a degree of planning, caution and joint negotiation more usually associated with elderly relatives getting out of cars. I managed it eventually with all the grace of an octogenarian attempting a parkour demonstration.
We sat gratefully against a low stone wall and stretched our legs across the coarse sand while speedboats and jet-skis slashed white scars across the blue water and a pair of opportunistic ducks assisted me with my ready salted crisps. The day was so still and clear that voices drifted across from the Inverberg holiday park on the opposite shore, two miles away, sounding oddly near in the clean air.
Once fed, watered, and very briefly restored, we refilled our bottles at the ranger station, where a lively group of foreign youths were preparing to set out. Portuguese, we guessed, though the atmosphere was international enough that they might have represented half the Iberian peninsula. They wore some sort of scout uniform and the whole group was conducting its preparations in a style best described as exuberantly ungoverned. There was much gesticulating, shouting, milling about and apparent democratic interpretation of authority. One girl, who cannot have been more than thirteen, lounged against a wall smoking a cigarette with such relaxed flair that she looked less like a scout and more like a tiny continental actress between scenes.
After several hours of this agreeable idyll, in mid-afternoon, Colin’s phone rang. It was Father.
“Hi, Dad.”
Pause.
“Yes, we’re fine.”
Pause.
“Yes, the views are lovely.”
Pause.
“No, we’re not walking too fast.”
Longer pause.
“No, really, we’re not.”
Another pause.
“What do you mean, you can tell we are?”
Pause.
“You can hear my water bottle and it’s sloshing too fast?”
Resigned pause.
“Yeah… alright, Dad.”
Then Mum came on the line.
“Yes, Mum, the old guy’s doing fine.”
The “old guy,” naturally, was me.
Father had worried about this walk from the moment we announced our plans. He worried about the mileage, the weather, the remoteness, the mountains, my age, our fitness, our provisions, and no doubt the possibility of marauding stags. The fact that both Colin and I had been walking for years, that this was Scotland rather than the Gobi Desert, and that I was still some way off collecting a pension had done little to reduce his sense that we were attempting a high-risk expedition into the unknown. It would take several days of regular updates before he began to accept that Mountain Rescue need not be kept permanently on standby.
Toward evening we stopped for tea on a lonely bench set high on a rocky outcrop above the loch. It was one of those perfect resting places that seem put there by a kindly hand — a bench with a view of water and sky, silence all around, and just enough height to make you feel you had earned the privilege of sitting there. According to the guidebook, we had only a few miles left to go, which suited us perfectly, since our legs were tiring and our feet were beginning once again to mutter darkly about trade union representation. We drank tea, ate chocolate, and looked down over Loch Lomond with every confidence that the day was all but done and that a cold beer and a comfortable chair were waiting just ahead.
Optimism, as ever, is a beautiful thing.
The wrong hotel ....
We left the bench and followed a narrow, twisting path down to a gate where a hand-painted sign announced: Inversnaid Hotel – 2 km. Barely more than a mile. Excellent. We congratulated ourselves quietly and continued along the shore on what looked like a final, manageable stretch to our night’s lodgings. It was at this point that the West Highland Way introduced us properly to one of its more malicious habits, namely the tendency to spring an entirely unnecessary and disproportionate difficulty upon you at the very end of the day, precisely when you have relaxed, begun mentally removing your boots, and allowed your body to notice how tired it really is. Today was our first lesson in this.
So certain were we that the end was now close that we let ourselves soften. The aching calves, the stiff knees, the fatigue in the arches of our feet — all of it was acknowledged and, in a sense, welcomed, because surely it would all shortly be cured by a shower, a chair and a pint. The path, however, had other ideas. It narrowed. It roughened. Then it became actively unpleasant. Before long it was scarcely more than a foot-wide strip running through rocks and roots, forcing us into scrambles over awkward ledges and around tree trunks while hugging the lochside with teasing persistence. Every turn seemed likely to reveal the hotel at last; every turn instead revealed more path, more roots, more rocks, more shoreline and no obvious end to any of it.
At one point we passed the Portuguese scouts again. They looked, like us, tired and distinctly unimpressed by events. For all that the scenery remained lovely — and it really did, with the loch still gleaming through trees and the afternoon light softening over the water — we had by then reached the stage where aesthetic appreciation had begun to lose the argument against beer.
The sign at the gate, we later learned, was notorious. Everyone agreed it lied.
Eventually, though, the Inversnaid Hotel itself came into view. With the needs of exhausted walkers apparently far from their minds, the designers of the place had seen fit to provide access by means of a large number of uneven stone steps. First one had to climb a flight up to the
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Colin looks optimistic |
Still, we made it into the grand entrance hall and looked about with immediate approval. The place was undeniably plush — tartan carpets, polished wood, attentive staff, softly glowing lamps and the unmistakable aroma of comfort. I thought, with deep gratitude, that AMS had done us very proud indeed. This was unexpectedly luxurious. This was civilised. This was, frankly, the sort of place that could make a man forget he had feet at all.
So I limped up to reception with what I intended to be a winning smile.
“You have a room for me. Name of Walford,” I said confidently.
The receptionist looked at our scruffy walking clothes and general air of weathered disrepair with measured doubt, then leafed through a sheaf of papers. There were many names on those pages. Walford was not among them.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
My smile wavered. “Well, I was fairly sure until you said that.”
At this point a young duty manager appeared, summoned perhaps by the faint scent of administrative collapse.
“Are you sure you don’t mean the Inversnaid Lodge?” he asked, in the tone of a man who has delivered this news to weary walkers many, many times before. Our hearts sank. “Ah,” we said, with the dawning horror of men seeing their beer recede into the distance. “So we’re in the wrong place?”
He nodded kindly.
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid this is the Inversnaid Hotel. The Inversnaid Lodge is further up the road, about fifteen minutes’ walk. Follow the drive up onto the road and you can’t miss it. It’ll be on your left.”
We turned and limped back through the lobby, bidding farewell to tartan luxury, polished brass and chandeliers we had only just begun to love. At this point we were convinced that the Lodge must turn out to be some dreadful annex with damp walls, twitching curtains and a mattress full of historic sorrows.
“Further up the road,” it transpired, involved a tarmac drive leading to an equally steep tarmac road climbing into dark conifer woods. Soon we were trudging up it in moody silence, entirely convinced that we had become the victims of a local practical joke devised over whisky by sign-writers, hotel managers and perhaps one or two men from the planning department. After fifteen long minutes we reached the Inversnaid Lodge and stopped dead.
It was beautiful.
A graceful Regency house stood in peaceful gardens, elegant and serene in the evening light, as though it had wandered out of a period drama and taken root beside the Highlands. It looked far too handsome, far too composed, and far too welcoming to be meant for two weary walkers like us. We found ourselves instinctively searching for the catch.
I fell in love with the place on the spot.
The right end to the day ....
The evening that followed was slightly surreal, though in the most agreeable possible way. One moment we had been picking our way along the lochside, damp, tired, speckled with dead flies and muttering darkly about signs and hotel names; the next we were showered, changed into clean clothes and seated in an elegant dining room with Clannad playing softly somewhere in the background and the rich scent of Asiatic lilies floating through the air.
The house, which had looked impressive enough from outside, proved even more remarkable within. Its Georgian dignity extended through every room: polished floors, plush carpets, gilt-framed oil paintings, sweeping staircases of gleaming mahogany, and mounted stag heads peering down from walls with that peculiar expression of permanent antlered surprise. A number of contented cats drifted about the place with the assured entitlement of creatures who knew they belonged in such surroundings. There was no television in our room. A television would have looked faintly vulgar there, like a traffic cone in a stately home.
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Where's my hotel? |
As we waited for the other guests to arrive, our hostess Linda explained that the lodge’s principal business was as a photography school and that three photography students were currently staying there. She and her husband Eugene had moved up from London twenty years earlier and now ran the place with the quietly practised charm of people who had made exactly the right decision in life.
“You two look in much better shape than the other couple of lads staying tonight,” she said, handing us cold beers. “I honestly thought we might need an ambulance for them.”
“West Highland Way walkers?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “but they’ve gone back down to the hotel for a meal. Apparently they don’t like chicken.”
This struck me as one of the most gloriously futile pieces of decision-making I had ever heard. Having finally reached the sanctuary of the lodge, they had voluntarily walked back down to the wrong hotel because casserole was not to their liking. It suggested either heroic culinary standards or complete mental collapse.
The three photography “students” joined us for dinner. They were all, let us say, of an age to appreciate comfort, civility and proper portions. One was a woman from Dundee, another a man whose voice had been altered by a laryngectomy, and the third a genial chap called Ken from Nottinghamshire. They were gentle, pleasant company, and the meal passed in exactly the sort of easy, good-humoured conversation that good food and shared strangeness can produce. There was an open fire, more beer, candlelight softening the room, and that lovely sense of having landed unexpectedly well in the world. Really, I thought, this was infinitely preferable to camping. Or, for that matter, to the bunkhouse. Or indeed to almost any other arrangement that involved discomfort.
After dinner we retired to the lounge and shared a whisky with Linda, Eugene and the others while conversation turned to birds and local wildlife, especially in relation to photography. Colin, being a dedicated dabbler in ornithology, launched happily into discussion with Eugene about what species we might hope to see in the Highlands, while one of the cats selected me for special attention, winding around my legs and fixing me with an expression of green-eyed, faintly sardonic affection. The combination of a long walk, a hot meal, a beer or two and a generous armchair was beginning to work upon me very powerfully. I settled deeper into the cushions and gave myself over to a pleasant, slightly treacherous reverie. This was such a delightful place — so warm, so civilised, so entirely devoid of slogging — that I began to wonder whether it might not be sensible to remain here for the rest of the week. Sue could come up by train. By tomorrow morning she could be here. We could stroll in the gardens, admire the mountains from a dignified distance, potter by the loch, sit by the fire in the evenings with wine and cats, and perhaps take up photography ourselves. We could spend our days artfully capturing images of those poor deluded souls still marching north toward Fort William, each one trailing blisters, midge bites and misplaced optimism.
I was well into this fantasy when Linda swept into the room and announced, quite suddenly, “The prints are ready.”
This produced immediate excitement among Eugene and the photography students, who rose and filed out with purpose. I noticed then that Colin had already slipped away at some point, leaving just me and the cat, who had arranged itself across an armchair and looked entirely indifferent as to whether I shared the room with it or not.
In the end Colin and I retired to bed, somewhat to our chagrin, earlier than the older residents, though we at least had the respectable excuse of having walked all day. There was still no sign of the two anti-chicken walkers, who had presumably dined extravagantly at the hotel and were perhaps even then regretting their principles. As a final footnote to the day, Linda had already asked us what we wanted for breakfast, so there were no forms and no boxes to tick.
Oddly enough, we rather missed the challenge.
See Route on ......
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