Scotland - Days 14 - 16
We weren't in a rush to get up on the Wednesday after Ben Nevis, and when we did quite a lot of cars had arrived at the car park we'd stopped in. It was surprisingly cold in the morning, and there was a lot of condensation on the inside of George's windows, which is a sure sign of a cold night. We had some porridge for breakfast while we discussed the plans for the day.
We'd been thinking of doing another overnighter on the hill, with either the bivvy bags or the tent, but were a bit concerned about the temperature this morning! I feel the cold at the best of times, and although we have got warm sleeping bags etc, we still felt that we'd probably be cold overnight as it would be even colder higher up!
On top of this, our legs were a bit achey from yesterday's efforts, so we decided not to do anything difficult or cold, and instead we'd try and tick off the easiest Munro nearby. After consulting Google, this seemed to be Mullach nan Coirean which is one of the Mamores near Glen Nevis.
We stocked up on food and diesel at Morrison's in Fort William first. It may sound like we get through an awful lot of food and drink on holiday. Whilst we may be big eaters, the main reason for this is the limited space in George for storing food and drink. We normally have to top up supplies every 2 or 3 days, especially fresh items like bread, or bulky things like wine. Having said that, we have both developed a "food baby" this trip which will have to be dealt with when we get back home, after we have had our end of holiday Dominos Pizza of course.
We eventually set out to tick off our easy Munro at about 1pm. This sounds a bit late, but the walk was only supposed to take 3.5 hours so we had bags of time.
However... I had not paid much attention to the route, leaving it to Claire who is usually much better at that sort of thing than me. But today was the exception. We started off walking up a path that was promisingly signposted "Munro Access". This led to a forest track which dead ended in a load of felled tree debris with tyre tracks over it. We continued, and things gradually became tougher and tougher until we were clambering over felled trees and leaping over gullys, and sometimes both of those things at once. It was at this point that I finally queried the route, and it turned out that we were supposed to be on a nice path on the ridge about 400m above us.
Rather than turning back and trying to find a better way (which would have been far easier in hindsight), we ended up fighting our way across the terrain on a 45 ish degree slope covered in heather, bracken, and very loose tumbling rocks. The sun was blazing and I was sweating so much that it was going in my eyes and I couldn't see.
After an age, we dragged ourselves up onto the ridge at about 600m and had a sandwich and tried to dry off. Claire took her t shirt off and draped it on a rock, whilst I opted to leave mine on and dry it with a combination of body heat and sun. I can report that my method worked far better and that Claire rather grumpily had to put a damp t shirt back on.
Once we were on the right path, we were soon on the summit and admiring the views across the sea on one side and Ben Nevis on the other. I had been carrying extra weight in my rucksack in the form of Chris Bear, who has now bagged his first Munro.
We'd originally thought that we might continue along the ridge and tick off a second Munro, Stob Ban, but a look at the time and the ascent soon put us off. Our calf muscles were protesting after our tough hike up and we didn't fancy another steep ascent or a late finish.
So we returned by the route we should have taken in the first place, which was much easier than our actual route up, but still quite hard going in places as the path was quite eroded. There was also a very boggy section near the bottom of the ridge.
When we finally stumbled back down to George it was about 6.30pm, and we felt absolutely filthy from 2 days worth of serious sweating. We stopped at Linnhe campsite again, made use of the showers and then had a big dinner and collapsed into bed.
On Thursday, Claire's shins were hurting so much that walking was out of the question, so we decided to have a day off going up mountains and go to the beach instead.
The weather was not particularly encouraging first thing, with the campsite being shrouded in mist until about 10am, but we set off towards the coast near Arisaig anyway. It was a shame there weren't any high roads we could have taken, because I'm certain there would have been a spectacular cloud inversion in the valley. As it was, we were just driving through a cloud.
The clouds didn't lift until after we'd parked up, had lunch, and I'd had a power nap. I woke up because it was too hot in the van because of the sun, so we went for a walk on the beach. The beaches here are nice white sand, and the sea comes right up to the top of the beach at high tide so they are lovely and clean.
We didn't see much in the way of wildlife as the tide was well out, and by the time we got back to the van it was almost time for tea! Just how I like it. A man parked up opposite us with a sea kayak on his roof rack, and then proceeded to unpack a dripping wet tent and sleeping bag and drape them over his car and boat. We overheard someone asking him how he'd managed to get his stuff so wet when it hasn't rained for several days, and, caught off guard, he replied that the tide had come in and flooded his tent! I think a little white lie would have been better - if it happened to me then I'd be tempted to say that I was doing an overnight camp in my sea kayak when a sea eagle swooped down and grabbed my tent in its talons and dropped it in the sea. Or something like that.
The following day (Friday), Claire's legs were no better and it was clear that no more hills were to be bagged this trip. We thought we'd do some photography, but the weather was not playing ball so we didn't get many decent photos.
By the time we reached Glencoe at lunchtime, I'd come to the conclusion that it we were just going to sit around reading books in the van then we might as well be sitting round reading books at home, so we made the drive back home and are now sprawled out on the sofa with the heating on.
Despite the leg problems, we have bagged 8 Munros and 3 Trail 100 hills this trip, bringing our tally to 16/282 and 29/100 respectively.
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