Around Easter last year, back when leaving the house for a quick trip up to Scotland was allowed, Stu decided that walking the Great Glen Way from Fort William to Inverness would be the best possible use of a bank holiday weekend. The satisfaction of not having to use any annual leave was high on his list of motivations, along with challenge of fitting the 120km walk into barely three and half days.
I’m going to have to take some responsibility for letting this plan go ahead, because I can’t for the life of me think why this would ever have been a good idea. I can, at a stretch, agree that 30-40km of walking per day sounds just about doable. But when you add on heavy packs and wild camping, it gets a bit silly. Oh, and why not start the challenge after a restful night on a sleeper train? And let’s get a plane back on the Monday to really give us something to race for. Oh dear, I’m getting worked up already… it wasn’t all that bad, but I can say now that you should do this lovely walk over the recommended 5 or 6 days. I literally never learn.
Right, I’ll start at the beginning then. On the Thursday before the bank holiday, Stu and I swung our oversized backpacks onto our shoulders and headed to our respective offices to do a normal day of work. From there, we made our separate ways to Euston Station to join the throng of people staring up at the boards of delayed trains. I can’t remember what the issues were, but there was a risk for a while that the trip was going to be a non-starter. Luckily (I suppose), our train did run. Now, the Caledonian Sleeper is a lovely train. I’m also sure that its sleeper cabins are delightful, but I wouldn’t know because of course we chose the cheapest seat option – which, among its many attributes, features the necessity to get off at Edinburgh at around 4.30am and move along into another carriage. Apart from that though, the seats were big and pretty comfy and we did get a bit of sleep. And the views on the final leg of the journey from Edinburgh to Fort William were delightful (although I was trying to get some shut-eye for most of it).
We arrived at around 10am, changed from jeans into walking stuff in the station loos, got sun cream on, did a food shop and then walked around the town a bit looking for a hat. Basically we faffed about and started walking way later than planned. Using the 12 year old trail book we borrowed from my mother’s bookshelf, we found the start of the route around the side of a McDonald’s. The first few miles wound us out of Fort William and to Corpach at the start of the Caledonian Canal. We collapsed here for a spot of lunch, a tad concerned that we were already a bit knackered with sore feet. Corpach has a Sea Lock office where we picked up a key for a tenner each that promised to give us access to some facility blocks along the route. This didn’t really work out for us though – I think the blocks are mostly set up for people doing the canoe trail and we certainly didn’t find a useful shower (except for in Inverness, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to make use of due to the rush for the plane – much to the dismay of our fellow passengers).
The majority of the day was spent alongside the canal. It was lovely and sunny, and the scenery was fab, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit of a slog. After passing the pretty cool Neptune’s Staircase (the longest staircase lock in Britain, with 8 canal locks in a row), the next 10km or so looked quite similar.
We finally reached a swing bridge near the end of the canal and stopped on the grass for a break, making friends with a playful dog who seemed to be in charge of the bridge crossing. The change in scenery brought us to the start of Loch Lochy. Now isn’t that just the best name for a loch ever? We followed the trail around the west shore of the loch whilst starting to get a bit worried about the fading light and the fact that we certainly weren’t going to manage 30km before either it got dark or I had a meltdown, both of which were imminent. We also hadn’t a clue where we were going to set up camp; you are allowed to camp pretty much anywhere in Scotland (unlike in England), so our grand plan was to walk until we found a promising spot; preferably one without a cloud of midges. We lucked out soon after passing through a scattering of houses at Clunes. We found a nice little wooded area slightly away from the road and next to the pebbly shore of the loch. I collapsed here and cursed my boots, which I hadn’t yet replaced after them causing me some issues while hiking in Canada. Without wanting to ‘blame my tools’, it is likely that I could have been a tad less grumpy on this trip if I had sorted out some better-fitting footwear earlier.
So that concludes day one. We set up the tent, had a little face wash in the loch and had a quick dinner using Stu’s new Jetboil which, being the good wife that I am, I bought him for his birthday the previous year. We then got tucked into our sleeping bags and had hands-down the very best night’s sleep we’ve ever had while camping. I think the combination of being completely wiped out, the soft pine needle floor and the gentle lapping of the nearby water sorted us right out.
We knew we were going to have to put in some miles on the second day if we wanted to hold onto the plan of completing the trail over the long weekend. We headed off and spent the first part of the day on a nice track following Loch Lochy. It was pretty wooded, but we got the odd nice glimpse of the loch. By lunchtime, we made it to a scattering of buildings called Laggan, whose highlight is a fantastic pub on a boat where we stopped for a soup and a doorstop-sized sandwich. It was great, and I was happy to see it.
Next, we rejoined our favourite Caledonian Canal for a bit before reaching Loch Oich and following an old railway trackbed and then a military road along its shore. We were probably around 20km down at this point and starting to struggle a little. After Oich, there was another seemingly endless stretch of canal to follow and I think this is where I began desperately singing to take my mind off my feet. My personal walking favourites are the full Elephant Love Medley from Moulin Rouge, as well as a variety of school hymns (lots of apt ‘for the beauty of the Earth’ etc). Poor Stu.
We rolled into Fort Augustus in the early evening and were faced with a tough decision: stop here for the night, enjoy the public showers and accept that we weren’t going to complete the full trail; or plough on and get a few more kilometres out the way to still give us a fighting chance. It was a really close one. The fear of regret won in the end, so after inhaling some fish and chips by the river, we continued our way up into the forests above Loch Ness. We opted for the high route option of the trail, so followed a steep and winding path upwards until we found a good spot to camp again. We actually went to the top of the slope and out of the trees, but decided it was too exposed and windy up there so we backtracked and pitched the tent on the flattest bit of mossy ground we could find. It was a dense woodland, and very ‘forbidden forest’ in the fading light.
In the morning, we decided that we probably needed some sort of clean before setting off, so had fun trying to wash our hair using a bottle and water from a nice (and chilly) highland stream. We collected some more water to boil for porridge, then headed up out of the trees and onto the next stretch of the trail; following the shore of Loch Ness from above. This was a good stretch for views, although the weather was a bit mizzly.
Around 10km in, we wound down a zig-zag path into Invermoriston. We stopped here for lunch, taking a little detour to completely overindulge at the lovely Glen Rowan cafe. Feeling sluggish but refuelled, we then had a really steep climb out of town back onto the high route. This was definitely the toughest section for hills, but of course that meant the best views too. There is also a groovy ‘viewcatcher’ sculpture which we passed not too far out of Invermoriston.
The next town in our sights was Drumnadrochit, an ambitious target and one which we again had to pass through in order to eat up some distance before the final push to Inverness the next day. Once the boost from lunch wore off, this bit was really tough, not helped at all when one of the nice grassy patches we chose to have a sit down on turned out to be teeming with tiny ticks – our short rest was spent jumping about and scraping the little seed-like buggers off Stu’s legs.
After finally making it into Drumnadrochit, we had a quick tortellini dinner on a park bench and popped into a Coop to stock up on water and snacks. Then back onto the trail to get as far as possible before the light went. This is where I had a proper wobble. I was absolutely done: I had no energy left, my feet were killing me and I wasn’t having fun anymore. I had a little sit down on the forest floor and we agreed we’d stop at the next viable camping spot.
Thankfully, the next viable spot happened to be a well used and beautiful camping area with a gorgeous view and nearby stream. We actually lucked out on all our camping spots for this trip. If only you could enjoy the wild camping without having to carry all the equipment.
We got up early the next day for the final race to the end of the trail and to our afternoon flight home. I think we had around 25 to 30km still to cover. I remember pretty forest trails and fields, but mostly we were focused on Inverness which we could see in the distance at certain points. We marched for miles looking for a nice place to have a rare break, eventually just sitting on the path in a slightly inconvenient spot for other walkers (much more of these around as we approached the city). Naturally, we were then taunted by beautiful bench view spots which seemed to appear around every turn for the remaining stretch and which we didn’t have time to enjoy.
Upon finally making it into the city, we had to detour to the Seaport Marina office to drop off the key to the rest sites we didn’t use. We prioritised a quick lunch and an ice cream over a shower, and found our way to a shuttle bus that would take us to the airport. After checking in and depositing our large bags, we had a cider and a nap on the grassy banks just outside the terminal (it’s a pretty chilled airport).
And that was pretty much the end of that. We made it. Despite probably sounding like a right grump through this, I’m glad we did it. It is a beautiful trail, a great area and the wild camping was pretty cool. It would definitely have been better to have time to fit in some relaxing, but it would have been hard to change plans once we had committed to the challenge, and even I would have been disappointed if we had stopped short. Stu dealt with my wobbles well and we now both have a much clearer idea of where my line is (and his). It’s a good thing we found this out over a long weekend, otherwise it’s likely we would have planned some horrible distances to hike on our trip to Sweden later in the year.
On a side note, a trek like the Great Glen Way is probably one of the first types of holidays that will be allowed as lockdown eases, since you don’t need accommodation and it’s very isolated. Worth dusting the walking boots off for!
Best get some new boots then Heather!