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.