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WEST HIGHLAND WAY DIARIES

By Anne Ramsay
Contact the author via Chris Johnstone by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

Angus County Press sub-editor Audrey Lees recently completed the 95-mile West Highland Way, from Milngavie to Fort William, with two friends, Anne Ramsay and Angela Green. Here is their story.

Saturday, April 1, 2006. Milngavie to Drymen. 12 and a half miles.

THE West Highland Way begins outside a cake shop in Milngavie. The sign saying “Last chance to get a Paris bun for 95 miles” is conspicuous by its absence.

We handed our luggage over to the Travelite transport service and kept only our day rucksacks for the walk. Travelite were to deliver our big bags, with spare clothes, sleeping bags and luxuries to our appointed accommodation so that it would be waiting for us if we arrived.

Walkers were setting off regularly as we wrestled with our unfamiliar gaiters but at 10am we took our first tentative steps on this magnificent 95-mile adventure.

The first few miles, through Allander Park and Mugdock Wood were reassuringly domestic and we soon settled into our stride of walking and talking with equal enthusiasm. We left the dogwalkers behind at Loch Allian and felt that now we were getting somewhere. The Carbeth chalets snuggled into the trees on our left. Built as an inexpensive refuge for Glasgow families looking for a break in the country, the new owner was multiplying the rent to howls of protest from regular users.

We walked at a speed of three miles an hour on the flat. After two hours we stopped by the path for a tea-break and reflected that we’d done almost half the day’s walk already. This wasn’t so bad. One or two groups passed us as we sat on a dry stane dyke in the sun and we realised that they were the first walkers we’d seen since Milngavie. As long as we kept walking we were part of a people-train moving steadily towards the village of Drymen.

Anne opened her rucksack to reveal her stash of Baby Bel cheeses, enough to keep us all cheesed-up for the whole walk. Little did we know how grateful we would be for them later.

We packed up and crossed over the dyke to see our best view of the day, the wooded lump of Dumgoyach hill against a backdrop of distant, snowy mountains. We would be walking among these mountains soon enough.

The dullish trudge along a disused railway was brightened by the spectacle of three lapwings chasing off a crow which was after their eggs. Needing to make minor sock adjustments we looked for a good place to sit down for a minute.

The best place in sight was already occupied by a family of mum, dad, three children and a bouncy brown dog. They were all walking as far as Bridge of Orchy, 60 miles away, together. Was it child cruelty or a grand Easter holiday, we wondered?

At around 3 o’clock, we climbed out of the railway embankment and on to a quiet B road at tiny Gartness where the first thing we saw was a sheep with her two still-wet new lambs being taken in for the night. The lambs were already experimenting with their legs, as they refused to lie down in the back of a joggling pick-up truck.

Our first night’s accommodation was a mile further on. It was a wigwam at Easter Drumquassle Farm and it would have been great if we’d been hobbits. The door was three feet tall and the only items of furniture were platforms against three walls and two wide planks to fill the rest of the space for sleeping on. Suffice to say we were lucky – it was a mild evening for the beginning of April. Our luck was not going to hold.

Sunday, April 2, 2006. Drymen to Rowardennan. 14 miles.

We started the second day by getting slightly lost for the one and only time of the walk, jumping across a burn unnecessarily then having to jump back. On the track through Garabhan forest we overtook our first walkers, a pack of four Irish Scouts who seemed to be sharing one apple and one biscuit between them all. We looked at Anne’s rucksack, misshapen by its huge cargo of Baby Bels and carried on guiltless, in survival mode.

The forest took us to the edge of the Highlands, to Balmaha. There we caught sight of Loch Lomond for the first time. The Way took us up to Craigie Fort where we had unrivalled views of a helicopter delivering sacks of roadstone to a small island just offshore. We hugged the shore and watched the keelboats of the Loch Lomond sailing club race round their buoys and then the rain came on.

It ran down our faces and inside our coats and Angela’s coat began to foam. A quick phonecall home ascertained that maybe, just possibly, there was a tiny chance that it had been specially washed for the Big Walk by a third party and possibly, just possibly….. not waterproofed afterwards. Oops.

The rain stayed on for three hours, until we flung open the door of the Rowardennan Hotel and stood dripping in the main bar. All heads turned to stare at us and every body else looked toasty-warm and cosy-dry, as if they had been there for hours, which they had. We ate our tea quickly then walked on to the Rowardennan Youth Hostel, where we were to spend the night.

The hostel is a former Victorian hunting lodge on the shore of loch Lomond. It was warm and the drying room did what it was supposed to for our dripping boots and jackets. Drying rooms are very important on the Way, defining criteria, almost, for an establishment’s worth. We were warmly welcomed and given complimentary hot drinks. Bliss.

Monday, April 3, 2006. Rowardennan to Inverarnan. 13 and a half miles.

The third day is reputed to be one of the toughest days of the West Highland Way. The path weaves in and out of the trees and hugs the shore of Loch Lomond in a manner more suited to the feral goats that live on the steep slopes than walkers with lumpy rucksacks on their backs. There must have been 30 trees down across the path as a result of the landslides that happened regularly after torrential winter rains. They had to be crawled over (usual) or slithered under (annoying). Tree roots tried to snag our boot soles and the constant up and down huge rocky steps was hard on the knees. We had at least three false alarms for the section described as “tricky rock slab” in our guide book so that when it came for real we scooted across it’s twelve inch width with hardly a thought.

BUT the sun shone on us and the dark water twinkled through the trees all day and we absolutely loved it. Forced to slow down and walk in an altogether more thoughtful manner, we looked at the views and took photos and treated the experience like the Easter holiday it actually was. And of course we had lunch at the Inversnaid Hotel, halfway along the Loch, to look forward to.

Just before Inversnaid, we passed a walker in a kilt, mooching along very slowly. Secretly delighted at catching somebody up, we assumed he must be one of the men we’d seen who seemed to be walking fuelled only by Strongbow and Woodbines and he was carrying a full pack the size of Barra.

We tried to cheer him up a bit but he readily admitted he was finding this day very, very tough indeed. Never mind, you’ll get a rest and a good meal at Inversnaid, we said, and carried on.

The Inversnaid Hotel was like a MASH unit when we arrived. Every picnic table in the garden had a grown man close to tears with his boot and sock off and his poor battered tootsies festooned with some manner of plaster or substitute skin product. Because, you see, it’s not your fitness that lets you down on the West Highland Way, it’s your feet. If you can keep your socks and boots dry, you reduce the chance of a blister, hence the importance of drying rooms. Many of these unfortunates were walking in ordinary boots or boots that had not been broken in and the rough lochside terrain had tested their footwear to its limit.

Passing quickly through the wreckage of humanity, we headed in to the hotel, dreaming of hot soup and perhaps a delectable toastie…

“Ve have no food today, only sendviches” said the foreign barman, trying not to laugh. How can a hotel, presumably with paying guests, have only sandwiches? It was a question which occupied the three of us as we stumbled across the cold, dark bar to a window seat bearing trays laden with nasty cheese and tomato fodder. We were spitting mad but the truth dawned slowly. The Inversnaid Hotel hates walkers and loves bus parties and, this being a Monday, there were no bus parties coming so they didn’t trouble the chef with coming to work.

We were distracted by the arrival at our table of the kilted walker and his kilted friend, who had gone ahead of him. The very slow walker we had passed removed his boot and sock to reveal the source of his difficulty; he had no skin left on the balls of his feet.

Scorn turned to admiration for Alex who had endured three hours of agony to get from Rowardennan to Inversnaid, not wanting to give up and disappoint his friend. Anne, who is a GP and who also carried a comprehensive medical kit as well as a life supply of cheese in her rucksack, dressed Alex’s feet and suggested he stopped walking….

After another two hours of lochside trekking we reached Ardlui and turned away from Loch Lomond for good. We missed its sudden views and sparkling water and the arduous descend into Inverarnan seemed to go on forever.

Another night in a wigwam awaited us but this one had curtains and a heater above the hobbit-door. After spending the evening in the “world famous” Drover’s Inn, where we learned that Alex the Skinless had indeed returned to Glasgow, we walked the very cold and windy half-mile back to our wigwam home and after a hottish shower, climbed into our sleeping bags.

By now it was frosty outside and even in two sleeping bags, a silk liner and thermals I was soon so cold that I shivered uncontrollably. I lay in the dark awaiting death and listening to my two comrades breathing regularly, assuming that they, lucky devils, were sleeping.

By 4.15am we were all wide awake with the cold. The “heater” was heating the roof and nothing else. We put on the light then put on hats, socks, fleeces and gloves and got back into our sleeping bags. We walked the next day on two hours sleep each.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006. Inverarnan to Tyndrum. 12 and a half miles.

Day Four was a day of views. It began on a wide track parallel to the A82 to Crianlarich and the first traffic we’d seen since Balmaha seemed loud and intrusive; we’d been in a carless world for a day and a half and it had been a joy.

A cobbled military road built by General Wade took across the main road and over the hillside to the halfway point of the West Highland Way. It was a momentous occasion and we’d reached it with never a thought that we didn’t want to walk any more. What kept us going was wondering what the view would be like around the next corner or over the next hill and my abiding memory of Angela will be of her striding ahead, guide book open in her left hand as if she was about to recite from it, which she often did.

“We’re coming to an old stone bridge next,” she’d say and, hey presto, there it was. Each day’s walk was a string of pearls predicted from the guidebook.

We agreed early on that everyone should walk at their own pace so Angela walked fast and stopped to wait for us often, Anne took up the middle spot, uncertain as to whether to wait for me or try to catch Angela and I tried to keep the same steady speed, determined not be hurried by anyone or anything.

A short steep climb after the halfway mark was rewarded with views over the valley below and the twin peaks of Ben More and Stob Beinnein and the railway viaduct we’d be crossing on the way home. The views just kept unfolding for the next hour and a half until we descended and found ourselves at Auchtertyre Farm, where we bought some free range eggs, put them carefully in Angela’s rucksack and arrived at the By the Way Hostel about an hour later.

Our accommodation was to be in a three-bed trekker hut and it was with the deepest joy that we saw it was proper cubic building with two heaters, lovely thick quilts, a toilet and shower that were actually in the same building as us and a fully fitted kitchen to make our breakfast in. We had the drying room to ourselves and the craic with the cheery Glaswegian owner was free.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006. Tyndrum to Kingshouse. 20 miles.

We had been living in fear of Rannoch Moor Day, since September 2005, when we had decided to do the walk. None of us had ever walked 20 miles in our lives and the last ten or so were to be across bleak and inhospitable Rannoch Moor – no shelter, no prisoners….

The first seven miles, to Bridge of Orchy, was on a rough and wet track and the loose stones moved underfoot. We arrived at Bridge of Orchy at 12pm and a hot cup of coffee and shortie biscuit, a dose of tartan upholstery and a comfy seat for thirty minutes had an amazingly fortifying effect on all three of us.

We took the climb up through dense woods to open mountainside literally in our stride. Was it possible that we were actually turning into walkers? A tiny detour off the path to a small cairn at the top was rewarded by views of Loch Tulla, the Black Mount and Rannoch Moor.

I had expected the route across the moor to be a thin thing, perhaps not much more than a sheep path picking its way between emaciated clumps of heather for 10 miles. What I did not expect was a single-track cobbled road suitable for a small truck. In fact, just such a truck kept us company for the first two miles as the local ranger chose our afternoon to make his regular litter sweep. There wasn’t much litter for him that day but in summer, when walkers pass nose to tail, he is a very busy man with the added annoyance of midgies to contend with.

We broke the long day up with short stops every hour and a half or so, whether we needed them or not and it worked. We all made it safely over, even having enough energy to appreciate the sight of the mountains of the natural amphitheatre of Coire Ba. These are mountains you can only see by walking to them, as we had done. They sat on the landscape like terrifying dumplings and – did I mention the rain, sleet and snow? – the driving sleet and snow only added to the drama.

Although none of us suffered badly with blisters during the walk, the cobbled surfaces, like the track over Rannoch Moor were very hard on the feet and by the time we arrived at the Kingshouse Hotel we were all stiff-legged and glad to stop. We had another reason to look forward to our night at Kingshouse. It was our most luxurious accommodation by far and we had booked a room with a bath. We had been looking forward to that bath for five days and I’d brought bath foam especially for this day.

Stopping only to photograph the red deer in the Kingshouse car park, we booked in, rushed upstairs to our room, stashed our boots and coats in the drying room and unpacked everything. Our room looked like an explosion in an Oxfam shop. Every surface was strewn with gloves and books and socks and Baby Bel cheeses and life held only the promise of a good meal, a hot foamy bath each and dry boots the next day.

And then, in the fading evening light, the power went off. A desperate phonecall to Reception confirmed that it only affected our end of the building. It stayed off from 7pm until 10.45pm and came back on in full blazing glory just as we were all dropping off to sleep in our disaster-area accommodation.

I awoke at 1am worried about our boots. The drying room had been overfull and there was no chance of anything actually drying in it. Our room, on the other hand, was so hot that it was hard to breathe!

Anne had fallen suddenly and dramatically asleep, as usual, but Angela was awake too and asked: “Are you worried about the boots Aud? So am I.” In true Enid Blyton stylee, we put on head torches and, pyjama-clad we snooped around the dark and silent hotel in search of newspapers to stuff our boots with. We found a huge box full in the lounge, next to the dying embers of the log fire.

We moved everything from the drying room to our own radiator and spent most of the rest of the night turning and adjusting wet things to dry them for the next day.

Thursday, April 6, 2006. Kingshouse to Kinlochleven. 9 miles.

The human body has an amazing ability to recuperate and the next morning we were ready to walk again. We had survived Rannoch Moor but the second terror of the West Highland Way awaited us; the Devil’s Staircase. As we tripped merrily down to breakfast the sun shone and the world was a bright, optimistic place. But as we settled the bill for our dark bathless night, the heavens opened.

Five minutes into that day’s walk I decided not putting on my waterproof trousers and fleece top had been a bad decision and only the well-judged intervention of Angela and Anne stopped me being blasted to the ground by rain as hard as ball-bearings as I shoogled about on one leg in a T-shirt trying to get properly dressed and reflecting that I could have done all this in the lounge beside the roaring log fire five minutes earlier.

The rain had turned to sleet by the time we reached the bottom of the Staircase on the main road to Glen Coe. The path itself is a series of hairpins that takes about an hour to surmount. For once, even Angela was slowed down by it and by the time we had all inched our way to the summit, the sleet had turned to big fat snowflakes that were beginning to lie on the path. No matter. We had reached the highest point on the West Highland Way.

As we stood beside the summit cairns, for five glorious minutes the sun came out and we saw the Mamore Mountains and Ben Nevis in their full glory. Then the sky closed in again and the snow returned but it didn’t matter; we’d seen what we’d come to see.

It was (almost) all down hill for the rest of the day. Walking across the top was hugely enjoyable, especially since we knew that the day’s walk was less than half that of the previous day, and to be honest, the Devil’s Staircase wasn’t as steep as we had been led to expect it to be. With Kinlochleven in our sights and an hour away, we stopped for a short tea-break and were passed by a party of 13 soaked schoolchildren looking, rightly, sorry for themselves.

The gravelly descent into Kinlochleven was a real knee-cruncher that we had been warned about in Tyndrum. We had taken the precaution of hiring walking poles for this bit and I’d practised on Rannoch Moor, where the poles had speeded me up. Now they were invaluable at stopping me running away with myself and with controlled ease I streaked past Anne and then Angela, dabbing at the ground like a demented chicken. So this was what it felt like to be in front! Unnatural!

We arrived at the hostel too early for the warden so we found our room and, because the heating hadn’t come on yet, got under our quilts to reflect on the day. Anne’s uncanny knack of falling instantly and deeply asleep didn’t let her down.

That night we ventured out into the depressed, wild-west town that is Kinlochleven for tea. It was the last time we would see all the characters who had started the walk at the same time as us and who we had met at Inverarnan, Tyndrum and Kingshouse; the tall, thin man and his 14-year-old son; the couple from Paisley who did it on a whim; the three women from Midlothian who conquered blisters and finished the walk; the anticlimax of the end was beginning.

As we walked back to the hostel, I left Anne and Angela and went to find a payphone. I met two people in the drizzle and both asked me for money “not that they were alcoholics or anything but they just needed to buy milk”.

Friday, April 7, 2006. Kinlochleven to Fort William. 14 and a half miles.

No-one talks about the last day of the West Highland Way for a very good reason; they don’t want to put you off. It starts with a long climb out of Kinlochleven just as steep and long, in my opinion, as the Devil’s Staircase. It was raining heavily when we did it and I had to resort to my secret weapon, my personal radio, to take my mind off the fact that my knees were just under my nose for step after step.

As we climbed, the rain turned to very heavy snow and I realised I had got too hot climbing out and was now freezing cold at the top and in the full teeth of the North wind. To make matters worse, the precipitation was, at last, too much for my excellent jacket. It was getting through.

Also at the top of that climb we found the wreckage of Mary, inching along on her poles with her head down and a defeated look in her eyes. Mary was around 60 and she and her hillwalker colleagues were doing the walk in just five days, a momentous task. Mary was slower than the other two so they had simply gone on ahead and left her.

We walked with her for a while and she had a break with us then went on ahead. For the rest of that day, we kept each other in sight and sometimes walked together and Mary cheered up a good bit as Angela told her how far we had gone and what terrain she might expect next. We didn’t meet her friends until 4pm. They had been down to their lodgings, left their kit and come back to look for her. They hadn’t seen her for six hours since then and she could well have been dead in a ditch for all of that time.

The views as we crossed the Lairig Mor must have been wonderful but in all honesty the blizzarding snow blotted them all out and it was far too bad to get the camera out. The snow plastered our fronts then slipped off in great slabs of white and we all got too cold even to stop for a rest. We later found out that Glen Coe received four feet of snow that night and the ski lifts had to be closed.

We descended through the aftermath of clear-felled pines and found the worst sections of path of the whole walk. Swollen burns flooded the path regularly and the stepping stones were unsafe and covered in slime. Close to the end of our reserves of everything, including Baby Bel cheeses, we gathered round an information board only to find out that we were still three and a half hours from the end. We were a little “disappointed” to say the least but after a whole day of literal ups and downs we joined a land rover track that steadily descended to the main road to Fort William. We stumbled on to that road at 5pm. Across the road at the Glen Nevis visitor, newly weds were having their picture taken under leaden skies with Ben Nevis as their backdrop.

We celebrated the end of our walk in the Crannog restaurant in Fort William. The mood was strange after spending a jolly week with no real tension. Anti-climax was upon us. What did we have to plan or look forward to or train for now that our big adventure was over?

Being generously sponsored by our friends, family, neighbours and colleagues undoubtedly gave impetus to our effort. Anne raised over £1,000 for Brain Tumour UK and Angela and I raised over £500 for the CLIC cancer appeal and the hyperbaric unit in Dundee respectively.

We are all very proud not just of walking the West Highland Way but of the way we walked it, taking time to absorb our surroundings and enjoy the views and never forgetting that this was also our holiday and not an endurance event. Other people had done it faster than us but few had done it more happily.

And our legs? Well, even two weeks on they still want to walk. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll let them…

Where next?

Other hoolet online articles by Anne Ramsay can be found at:
hoolet edition 49 - West Highland Way Diaries
hoolet edition 47 - Appraisal Defended

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.