Now I actually have walked 500 miles, unlike some who are just talk (i.e. The Proclaimers). I arrived in Fort William yesterday, finishing the 96 mile West Highland Way in 5 days (with one 30 mile day to catch up after some bad weather) – 504 miles from Edale, Derbyshire.
It was a fun section, if a bit rainy. There were a lot of thru-hikers (many more than I saw on the Pennine Way – I guess the distance is more manageable) and I met more Germans than all other nationalities put together – i.e. including Scottish and English. Nice to have some trail spirit again.
Taking a short break but hoping to continue for the grand finale – the fearsome 230 mile Cape Wrath trail.
Here is a conversation from the Way so you know the level of intellectual debate you’re missing. With a guy toughening up for the army – we’re in a sort of gear off / kit duel:
Him: I have excellent pants.
Me: um. Are we talking about underpants? I had an embarrassing conversation with a guy from Newcastle who turned out to be talking about trousers.
Him: Oh, right. Yes.
Me: Oh, ok. Me too.
Him: what?
Me: I also have excellent pants.
Him: mine cost £18 for each pair.
Me: mine cost £26.
Him: mine were half price on Amazon – so are really £36 each.
Me: right
Him: they have an anti-bacterial lining which means you can go 6 weeks without changing them.
Me: ok…. [look of deep suspicion combined with fear] How long have you been walking for?
Him: 6 weeks
Me: …..Is it too personal to ask if you have ever changed your pants?
View from Conic hill. It’s raining.
Loch Lomond from the south. It’s raining
Loch Lomond from the North. It’s about to move on from raining to a kind of water based horror show. The path along the shore became impassable – unless you allow swimming. I abandoned the trail to stay the night in a small bothy with 15 other people with the same idea. 12 of them German.
Postscript, January 2021: just before the real rain started, I remember walking along the banks of Loch Lomond behind a family singing the folk song of that name in harmony. It’s a sad song – I never knew! I always thought it was about two Scotch japesters racing each other to Scotland, one down the low road of the A1 and the other on the relative high road of the A68 via Byrness. Turns out it’s about dying abroad and the spirit returning to Scotland and Loch Lomond. A few years later I thought of it again, when we had realistic concerns we might die in the meltwater of the Sierra Nevada. I worried that the equivalent, my spirit returning across the ocean to home counties suburbia, had significantly less romanticism to it, and probably would not inspire future folk songs.
A brief reminder of what sun looks like.
Postscript, January 2021: I walked with a German hiker a bit here, who was training to do a walk in Greenland that required him carrying 17 days of food, so his pack was very heavy. I recommend German hikers. If you have to choose a hiker based only on country of origin, German is a good bet. On average, based on my anecdotal sample from 4,000 miles, they are different enough to be interesting while temperamentally similar enough not to be annoying. And they are tough, and speak English. It’s good they are (on average) the best, because there are loads of them. It’s possible the Swiss are even better, but they are rarer (I think they have their own mountains?).
The mighty mountains around Glencoe. I’d just been told there is an extreme weather warning – which was going to add gale force winds to the background level of constant rain.
The rain intensified as I came over the pass to Kinlochleven, but I’d gone too long without food and really needed to eat. I ended up standing still in torrential rain, eating peanut M&Ms as fast as I could, their food dyes running down my hands in every colour of the rainbow. It was possibly poetic, and certainly sticky.
