Back to Scotland for another long walk – here are some photos of the Rob Roy Way which I completed a few days ago (so named because, as well as extortion, Rob Roy also enjoyed long distance rambling). Next I’ll be walking through the Cairngorms national park to meet up with regular supporter of long walks, Dr Tim – then on to Loch Ness!
I’ve never come to Scotland in the summer before, as I’ve taken people’s warnings about midges seriously. So far the problem seems overstated. I’ll accept that there is a Butch Cassidy-esque moment each morning when all the local insects line up outside my tent and I burst out into the daylight, midge spray in each hand…. but then everyone just wanders off. What are people complaining about?
Postscript, January 2021: the midges were never that bad on this trip – I assumed people were just being soft complaining about midges, as all you needed to do was move to get rid of them. In retrospect, this was just a good year. I’ve now experienced walks where stopping for a drink means your head being encased in a solid sphere of midges, and putting up a tent means running around it, occasionally stopping long enough to put a peg in, and then carrying on running.
There was nowhere good to camp, so I put my tent up in this puddle, right on the trail. I didn’t feel bad because not only are there no other thru-hikers on the Rob Roy Way, there are no other hikers at all. So this just felt pleasingly efficient.
There was quite a lot of gloom to be had.
This is the life. There is nothing more joyful than finishing the day’s walk, finding a shop to sell you high calorie treats and booze, and then just lying about in the sun.
Admittedly, the only sandwich I could get in the shop was a coleslaw sandwich that claimed to be over 50% mayonnaise. Which sounds (and tasted like) some kind of crime, and that’s even allowing the premise that a coleslaw sandwich meets the definition of a sandwich. Rather than, say, the start of a sandwich.
This campsite was memorable for having a slightly aggressively written sign on the inside of the toilet door that read ‘PUT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OTHER THAN TOILET PAPER IN THIS TOILET’. Clearly there had been flagrant violations of the previous less aggressive sign, but you can’t help but think that this crackdown is taking things too far.
This is it. The very reason you came out on the Rob Roy Way – your chance to pay homage to the man himself. Down this valley, a mere 4 miles in a completely different direction to the trail, is his grave.
I didn’t bother with the grave – I thought it was more reverential to pay my respects from the trail. I did, however, read ‘Rob Roy’ by Sir Walter Scott to understand the man better. As usual, Scott has done painstaking research and the story is 100% historically accurate, much like the bit in ‘Ivanhoe’ where Richard I meets Robin Hood and they storm a castle together.
Sunny Scotland!
Normal Scotland…
Loch Earn. Finally, some others on the trail. But they are cyclists. They don’t count as real people.
Above Loch Tay
Killin – west end of Loch Tay.
Kenmore – east end of Loch Tay.
The end (well, the end was actually 5 hours walking down a straight track with no view in heavy rain – so I’ve just put in a nice sunset from a different day as I’m told that’s an acceptable marketing strategy in the post truth era)