| The Great Glen Way | |
|
|
|
|
A perfect start ....
After a fine night's sleep we were treated to a breakfast of equal quality in a tastefully appointed dining room with music playing at exactly the right volume — which is to say, audible but not assertive. This establishment scored on every front, and we awarded it 9.2 out of 10 under the GGW Rating System (patent pending), thereby confirming it as the benchmark against which everything subsequent would be measured. The system, for clarity, operated on a base score of 7 for all accommodation, with points awarded or deducted according to the overall experience. It was a simple, entirely subjective, and wholly pointless exercise that nonetheless served its purpose admirably — which was to give us something to talk about that wasn't feet related.
I arrived at breakfast slightly after the others and found Colin tucking into a selection of items, some of which he had ordered and some of which appeared to have found their way onto his plate by other means. He was still, admirably, resisting the full fry-up — kippers, I think, on this occasion. I continued to admire his fortitude and to doubt its longevity.
A woman seated nearby was almost certainly a fellow Great Glen Way walker — she gave us the brief, considered smile of someone who recognises a shared enterprise and then returned to her breakfast with the self-contained efficiency of a solo traveller.
 |
|
Morning in Gairlochy |
At Gairlochy, a small fleet of cars and minivans was disgorging backpackers with the organised bustle of an operation in progress. Among them were a few members of what we had already begun to think of as the Great Glen Way Circus — a large group of walkers, exclusively female as far as we could determine, who maintained a ghostly parallel existence to ours throughout the week. They were either rumoured to be approaching, or had just departed, or were occupying the only available picnic table with an elaborate trestle lunch laid out by support staff. We encountered a small faction of this elusive sisterhood at intervals but never the full group, which only added to their mystique.
Before we set off I stopped to film the Grampian Mountains visible on the southern horizon beyond Gairlochy's small cluster of houses. They were wreathed in layers of white cloud, their summits breaking through to catch the morning sun, turning purple and russet and the deep maroon of exposed rock. It was, without qualification, one of the finest view of mountains I have seen in the United Kingdom.
"Me like," said Bod, somewhere behind the camera.
"Me like too," I agreed, and faded to black.
Midge life crisis ....
We set off expecting company and almost immediately found ourselves alone. The walkers at Gairlochy appeared to have been heading in the opposite direction — back toward Fort William — and we walked into the day in the solitude we had come to prefer.
Almost immediately the shoreline of Loch Lochy presented itself — the first of the three lochs that form the spine of the Great Glen Way, and the one whose name translates, with a certain exhaustion of imagination, as Lake Lakey. It offered occasional glimpses of water through the trees as we entered the depths of Clunes Forest, which was an older and more varied place than the word *forest* sometimes suggests — broad-leaf and conifer in a balance that felt natural rather than managed, carrying the particular atmosphere of Scottish woodland that has had time to become itself. A damp, leafy, fresh-water scent hung in the air throughout, and the path wound between trees and along the loch shore and occasionally away from it into deeper forest, always with the cobalt blue marker posts of the Great Glen Way appearing at reliable intervals to confirm that we were where we were supposed to be.
 |
|
Loch Lochy |
This was a mistake.
For a few minutes everything was fine. Then we became aware of a small dancing cloud of black midges around each of our heads, and shortly after that of the midges making contact with our newly exposed arms with the delicate but purposeful commitment of something that has found what it was looking for. We applied Jungle Formula. We applied Avon Skin So Soft. The midges absorbed both products with the indifference of creatures who have been here considerably longer than these repellents and are not especially impressed. We put our fleeces back on. Too late — the news had apparently spread, and larger members of the midge community were now arriving to investigate what their smaller colleagues had identified. We packed up and moved on.
It was during this rest stop, while I was still exposed and increasingly itchy, that the others informed me with studied casualness that the loch had its own resident monster.
"The locals call her Lochie," Bod said. "Lochie of Loch Lochy."
Less celebrated than Nessie, apparently, but with a comparable body of alleged sightings. I found this genuinely interesting and mentioned it to my wife on the phone that evening, where it generated a lively discussion. It was only the following day that they both admitted, with the satisfied expression of people who have waited the right amount of time, that they had made the whole thing up entirely.
[ED: But subsequent research reveals this ... ]
The South Laggan plague ....
We walked on through stately avenues of larch and pine, past loch-side properties whose bedroom windows looked directly onto the water — views that would make the prospect of getting out of bed on a grey morning considerably more bearable — before the forest released us onto higher ground and Loch Lochy revealed itself properly.
My abiding memory of Lochy is green. A deep, particular green — whether from the overcast conditions, the density of the surrounding vegetation, or some quality of the water itself, I could not say — that made the surface look simultaneously inviting and forbidding. On the opposite shore Meall na Teanga, a Munro of just over three thousand feet, rose steeply, its flanks etched with ancient drainage channels, every surface covered in that same fine dark green. To my eye it resembled, just slightly, a gigantic and mouldy tinned loaf, which I mean as an observation rather than a criticism. The loch takes its time revealing itself fully, but when it does, it does so with considerable panache. Leisure boats made tiny by distance crawled across the dark surface. I searched the opposite shore for signs of habitation — fences, buildings, any trace of human arrangement — and found none. The mountain was, as far as could be seen, entirely untouched.
The loch narrowed ahead of us, signalling the end of both Loch Lochy and the day's walking, and we crested a small rise to find South Laggan arranged below us around a natural marina of deep
 |
|
Meal na Teanga |
We had been hearing about a floating pub at Laggan — an oversized barge moored at the marina — and had been looking forward to it with the specific anticipation of people who have been walking since morning and know exactly what they want. We found it. A handwritten sign hung from its door.
*Closed due to illness.*
Who was ill, or what the illness was, the sign declined to specify. We stood for a moment and then walked on, disappointed and beer-less. I remembered, as we did so, that our B&B for the night had also mentioned being unable to serve evening meals due to *a health scare* of unspecified nature.
"The Laggan plague," said Bod. "We'll never make it to Fort Augustus."
We passed through the marina, rejoined the Caledonian Canal briefly through a small wooded section as the first rain clouds began to gather overhead, and then emerged onto the A82 and headed towards our digs - a short stretch of pavement-free road walking alongside coaches and lorries moving at the kind of speed that concentrates the mind considerably. It was short, and we were relieved when it ended.
A (luke)warm welcome ....
Our Our landlady greeted us at the door with a smile of reasonable warmth, then appeared to register something about us that gave her pause. "Ohhh no. You're all men."
"Yes, we are" I said, with more sarcasm than I had intended.
"Ohh dear…"
My immediate concern was that she had drawn some conclusion about the nature of our relationship and was preparing to ask us to leave. She seemed to resolve whatever internal calculation she was performing and reassured herself aloud.
"Oh no, it's all right. What am I thinking?"
What she was thinking was never established. She handed us our keys, indicated our rooms, pointed out the complimentary tea and coffee, warned us firmly against wearing boots inside the house, informed us that we must handle our own luggage as they were not insured for it, and then bustled away, leaving us to ourselves.
Colin and I opened our room with a key attached to a wooden fob of approximately coffee-table dimensions, and found ourselves in accommodation that was adequate but carrying the specific atmosphere of a grandmother's spare bedroom — car-boot ornaments, dated furnishings, a certain resolute resistance to the concept of the twenty-first century.
"Six?" I said.
Colin considered it. "Possibly five."
We had a few hours before dinner and spent them with the free coffee, a restorative sleep,
 |
|
Approaching South Laggan |
The evening's transport arrangement was that our host would drive us to the restaurant and the restaurant would return us afterward. Our driver appeared while Colin was still wrestling with the door.
"You're making that hard work," the man said. "Just turn it and pull it."
Colin did so.
"See?"
He had a bluff, unadorned personality that delivered itself without apology and which we found immediately entertaining. His accent defied confident identification during the short drive — we ran through Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Tyne and Wear before agreeing on something northern. It was Cumbrian, as it later emerged. We had never encountered a Cumbrian accent in sufficient isolation to recognise it, which was an educational gap the Great Glen Way had now addressed.
The accidental quiz night ....
The restaurant was part of a leisure complex on the loch shore — triangular chalets dotted around the water, a large main building that was part youth club, part sports centre, and part restaurant. I had been constructing a mental image of an ancient highland inn with low beams and a peat fire and was, consequently, somewhat underprepared for the reality. The food was decent, the service friendly, and the room clean, which is a perfectly adequate set of outcomes that I was briefly too disappointed to appreciate.
We recognised several faces — the two Oxford men at one table, and a couple we had been encountering on and off along the route, Mark and Carol, at another.
After dinner we went upstairs in search of a cold beer and found a large loft space with a small bar at one end and a games room at the other where teenagers fed coins into slot machines and played pool with the unhurried concentration of people who have nowhere particular to be. Two men stood at the bar — a large, solid individual with the posture of a nightclub bouncer and a smaller companion with a fixed, expressionless face. They spoke like Londoners. They looked, if I am being honest, like men who might have an interest in the deeper waters of Loch Lochy, and not for recreational purposes.
The room filled gradually. We were finishing our drinks and preparing to leave when a woman appeared and asked if we would like to take part in the pub quiz.
We did not want to take part in the pub quiz.
We also did not want to appear as the sort of Sassenachs who refuse to participate in local events, and — a more pressing consideration — she was our lift home and made no effort to conceal the fact that the lift would be arriving after the quiz rather than before it. We agreed with the grace of men who understand when they have been outmanoeuvred, ordered another round, and applied ourselves.
The thing about pub quizzes is that they are much harder to be indifferent to than they appear in advance. Within twenty minutes we were debating answers with the intensity of people who care considerably more than they expected to. An hour passed. The quiz concluded. Results were announced.
We had won.
The quizmaster produced a bottle of wine and led a round of applause. We accepted both with what I hope was appropriate modesty. On the way back to the B&B we held a brief conference and concluded that the wine, while appreciated in principle, presented practical difficulties in every direction: Bod doesn't drink wine; Colin and I would have drunk it before bed with predictable consequences the following morning; we could not carry it in our rucksacks; the luggage forwarding had already gone. So, for the only time in my adult life, I gave away a free bottle of perfectly good wine.
It was, all in all, a strange sort of night.
Daily Tweets
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
A fine breakfast before our walk to Laggan begins. Weather looks to be ok, but we've heard we're in for a soak tomorrow.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Today we basically walk the length of Loch Lochy. Kind of get the feeling they were running low on inspiration, by the time they named it.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Lots of forest track walking; wasn't always easy to see the impressive waters of the loch. First scramble & attack by midges, too. Bastards
. Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
I am lagging in Laggan. Feet are a series of shiny, filled-to-bust blisters, for some reason my toes catching the worst of them. I wasn't surprised to discover them looking a little grim, since they've felt squashed & battered all day in my boots.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Still, Loch Lochy is behind us with Loch Oich to come. Mostly sunny today, with an occasional sprinkle of rain.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Now going to shower & try to repair the destruction of my little piggys. We're out for eats at half-seven.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
We went out for dinner & our lift home pulled a fast one. Told us we were going nowhere, unless we took part in their quiz night. Serves her right that we won the damned thing.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
The prize was a bottle of wine. Bod doesn't drink it & @Darkfarmowl & I balked at necking it, ahead of tomorrow's walk. We gave it back.
See Route on ......
|
|
|
|
|
Prev
Next
No comments:
Post a Comment