Journal:
There were strong winds and some heavy rain squalls
during the night, but they didn't present any
problems for my tent, which I am very pleased with -
lightweight, strong, spacious, airy and waterproof.
It wasn't raining when I woke soon after 6am and,
though tired, I forced myself to get up and pack up,
taking advantage of the brief dry spell. I was
walking by 7am and my path continued across the
desolate and windswept moorland. I was hoping
to reach Inverlael, yesterday's "official" target,
within an hour, but the descent from the moorland to
Strath More was steep and winding and then I had to
walk some distance along the valley until I got to
Inverlael (which was more a place on a map than a
place in reality), nearly doubled my estimate to two
hours. The valley was quite lush and I know I
am quite close to the sea (Atlantic Ocean) here, so
the weather is probably more moderate lower down.
I saw some school kids walking to their bus from
some of the houses spread out in the valley.
After this usual brief
taste of civilisation, I again headed for the
heights, initially through a pine plantation, then
on a gravel 4WD track that climbed steeply to the
moors again. It was raining intermittently, so
I was keeping my raincoat on, but it wasn't too cold
and I was sweating on the climbs. When the
track petered out in the boggy peaty moorland, I had
a 5+kilometre stretch of cross-country work to do,
which I found very tedious. The grass and
tussocks were wet from the rain, meaning that my
feet were soon quite wet, and the boggy and eroded
peat made route-finding difficult and tiring.
You are constantly climbing down a metre or so to
boggy peat washouts then climbing back up again to
grass tussocks to look for a way past the next
washout. The weather was still quite miserable
but, as usual, the scenery was spectacular and
isolated. I had it all to myself for as far as
the eye could see, which was a long way.
Eventually I had a steep
and difficult descent to Glen Douchary and the
Douchary River, which I had to ford. I found a
place where I reckoned I could get across by
rock-hopping but, while climbing down from the peat
bank, my feet slipped and I ended up standing in the
water anyway! The guidebook now said to follow
the river downstream along the trackless bank, but I
had noticed a track, high on the other side of the
Glen, that seemed to be going in the right
direction. I had a break and read the
guidebook and determined that there was nothing
particularly special about the next section, except
that some of it was described as difficult, and
worked out on the map that if I climbed to the track
it was no further and probably faster going, along
with better views. I knew I still had a
long way to go to get to the Oykel Bridge Hotel and
hoped that walking on the track would give me a
chance of getting there at a reasonable hour.
There was still plenty of
ascent and descent and, despite the firmer footing,
I was tired and behind time. It's amazing how
much time gets soaked up in these cross-country
bits. Anyway, I kept plugging away, taking a
break every two hours, and reached the Oykel Bridge
Hotel, all on its own on a minor road in a valley,
at about 6:15pm. I checked in, enjoyed my bath
and went down to the carvery dinner at the appointed
time of 8pm. There were about a dozen other
people there and I was the only male who had not
dressed for dinner with a jacket and tie. I
looked very conspicuous in my shorts, T-shirt and
running shoes.
Breakfast is not until
8:30am, so it will be a late start and another long
day tomorrow, with some more cross-country. At
least I will be well-rested and fed by the time I
hit the trail.
