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Journal: |
I was well looked after by the New Zealand manager of the hostel
who couldn't have fitted much more cooked breakfast on my plate if
he tried. I didn't have a great night, with a persistent but
spasmodic sharp pain in my left achilles tendon which kept waking me
up, but by the morning it had gone....pinched nerve?
I left the hostel around 8:30am on a beautiful sunny morning and
headed north on the West Highland Way along the eastern bank of Loch
Lomond, which I followed for the remainder of the morning. It
was rocky in parts, sometimes necessitating using hands to clamber
up or down, and there were lots of exposed slippery roots, making
the going very slow, but it was also very pretty, with the Loch to
the left, clear water lapping on the rocks and occasional shingle
beach, shaded by lovely old deciduous trees and bordered by green
moss covered rocks. Early on the midges were biting, but they
were gone by 9:30am.
I had my morning break at Inversnaid where I found a picnic bench
in the sun and high above the water giving great views down the
Loch. It would have been easy to get my book out and spend the
rest of the day sitting right there in the sun. My right heel
was a bit sore where the blister had been, so I spent some time
putting a dressing over the area before continuing. There were
quite a few other walkers around, especially since it was the
weekend, but mostly I had the path to myself and, although progress
was slow, it was very enjoyable.
I reached the Beinglas Farm where I intended to make my lunch
stop around 2:30pm, considerably later than anticipated. It
was a sort of farm/pub/camping area and was very busy. I
bought an ice-cream and cold drink then walked a few hundred metres
further along the path and ate them plus the sandwich I had got from
the hostel in the morning. By now, Loch Lomond had been left
behind, and the path became easier walking although the scenery
wasn't as spectacular. The path more of less followed a rural
valley upstream with high hills on both sides, but shared with a
main road and a rail line, so not very remote. I made faster
time than I expected, listening to the Australia v Ghana game on my
radio, and reached the turn-off to Crianlarich, where I had booked a
bed in a hostel around 5pm. The last kilometre was very
enjoyable on a pine-needle-covered path descending through a pine
forest with the rays of the late afternoon sun warming my back and
dappling the path in front of me.
I reached the hostel at 5:30pm and, although they had the record
of my booking, the computer hadn't allocated me a bed in the
booked-out hostel. The South African manageress spent some
time working out what to do with me, and eventually gave me a dorm
room in the women's part of the hostel, and asked whether I would
mind sharing it with any women if it came to that. I said it
was OK by me, but in the end they found a few more blokes to put in
with me instead. I did a load of washing in their machine
before putting it in the dryer and walking a kilometre (that I would
have preferred to have avoided) to a hotel to get some dinner.
It will be an easy day tomorrow, and then I will have just two weeks
to go.
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