But, waking up each day to everything from eggs to black pudding was great – it gave us a big boost of energy that lasted all morning. That was the good news; the bad was that we had to pretty consistently ignore any niggling warnings about the damage to our cholesterol levels.
Day 2 was much easier, with only 10 miles until we reached Fort Augustus. Strangely, that actually made the hike seem to last longer – I've learned that there's physical distance, and the more important subjective distance. After 22 miles the previous day, I was dangerously overconfident.
We started off with a fantastic hike along tiny Loch Oich, mostly using the abandoned railway line. In addition to being mostly flat, it also livened things up with some rather unique architectural flourishes. Being built in the 1870's, it followed the practice of the time with adding medieval flourishes on everything. That's all well and good, but adding ramparts and other fortification details on isolated country tunnel or railway bridges was going a bit too far, I think.
A canal-side tea shop with a friendly huge labrador brought our already slow progress to a standstill for about 2 hours for the best of reasons – tea and homemade cakes... perfect.
Fortified and sluggish, we were able to meander down the trail, finishing up at Fort Augustus, another cool town at the base of the famous Loch Ness. On the way, we were passed by dozens of cyclists and when asked, we found out they were doing a charity benefit.
The event? All the way from Inverness to Fort Augustus by mountain bike (35 miles) and the rest of the way (40 miles) to Inverness by foot – ALL IN ONE DAY. Kee-razy stuff... it involved hiking through the night for most of the entrants.
After that, feeling much less impressed with our four day version of the trek, we grabbed a delicious beer at a remarkably surly pub, and got situated at our hostel. Dinner that night was at a nice surprise – a locally recommended Michelin starred restaurant that spoiled us with gourmet venison sausages and other goodies. Let's just say the walk up the hill to the hostel afterwards was a bit painful and slow... very slow.
The morning of day 3, we were facing another 22 miles to reach Dromnadrochit, and the trail didn't mess around. Right from the get go, we got to start with a mile of more or less constant steep vertical gains which got our blood pumping. The reward though was views like these:
The rest of the hike was tough. It wound up and down trails well off the loch, so they weren't nearly as flat as the last two days. We did end up coming across an ancient cave that the highlanders used as a shelter in times past:
… and some more great views as the sun started peeking out in the late afternoon.
We faced one more really steep, long climb, when I finally had to turn to my iPod to get me fired up. The bad news was that it was nearly out of power, but it had the good grace to last just to the top of the summit – fading out with a classic Rage Against the Machine track that got my legs pumping.
Finally... finally, we were on the home stretch, with one massive descent into the village of Dromnadrochit. At this point, within spitting distance of the finish line and cold beer, I couldn't hold back any longer and basically ran/controlled stumbled my way down. It sounds weird, but actually running downhill doesn't take that much more effort than walking with having to brace yourself on the way down. Besides, that meant beer o'clock was MUCH closer.
So, to the first pub it was, and I had a round of drinks waiting for Yanick and Gail when they arrived.
The night in the village was great. We were directed to the Fiddler's Roof, a funky, charming pub/restaurant on the village green, and boasting an owner who loves, loves, loves his whisky. Basically, we were set for the evening. A gourmet shepherd's pie, and a stout beer brewed in whisky kegs was to start, and a good local Highland whisky was to finish. Lovely.
Well, finished to a point – we were able to find enough energy to throw the disc around the green in the moonlight, before calling it a night and crashing.
The next morning, we made one of the better strategic choices of the trip. With bunches of blisters, and hearing that the last 20 mile leg to Inverness was a bad combination of steep trails AND relatively boring landscapes coming out of the highlands, we chose to, um, save our energy.
Trek, schmek – we got a ride from the lovely B and B owner to the local Urquart Castle, and checked that out for the day, before catching the bus to Inverness.
For the record – this highlighted how slow walking can be sometimes, as it was very, very disheartening to cover a day's trekking in about 40 minutes.
On a funny note, we found that Scots fall prey to the universal misconception that “surprise!”...other passengers on the bus can't hear your mobile phone conversation. Seriously.
In this case, a 16 year old girl or so treated us to such information as:
- She consistently lies to her mom and uncle to get more money to buy beer and get drunk.
- Having sex on a waterbed makes her seasick
- Her amazing nightlife plans generally involved going into town and meeting whatever guys can buy her drinks.
Nice, eh?
That aside, reaching the finish line at the castle at Inverness felt pretty good. Even skipping the last day didn't diminish the feeling too much, and awash in the glow of having finally finished walking, we retired (where else) to the nearest pub – in this case, the Castle Pub, which specialized in Scottish local ales – including ironically enough, one called Houston.
Dinner-wise, we got talked into eating at a local pub called, imaginatively enough, the Club by a group of drunk Scots. They were good for a laugh and their suggestion actually paid off – especially with an amazing sticky toffee pudding to finish the evening.
The last day, it looked liked events were conspiring to keep us in Scotland a bit longer, as the pesky Icelandic volcano of the unpronounceable name erupted again. The ash flow was threatening to close all the Scottish airspace, but a combination of favorable winds and my amazingly influential fingers and toes being crossed for luck meant that come 7pm, we were back in London. Safe, sound, and more than a little footsore – it was absolutely worth it.
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