Wednesday Oct. 4, 2023
- Start: Bridge of Orchy (mile 60.3)
- End: Kingshouse (mile 72.4)
- Distance Hiked: 12.1 miles
- Bus Ride: 7.1 miles – from Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy
My naïveté with the CityLink bus yesterday was a major wake-up call. As soon as I returned to my B&B in Tyndrum, I immediately went online to purchase a ticket for this morning’s 8:26 am route back to Bridge of Orchy. It might not be the cheapest option to travel between the two towns, but it was still better than paying to say $300/night to stay at bougie 4-star hotel.
And while I did enjoy my two nights at the Glengarry House, it was time to face the music. I’ve been fairly lucky with the Scottish weather thus far. Each day we’ve had some rain, but it hadn’t lasted for more than a few hours. Today would end that streak though. The forecast was predicting between 0.8 to 1.6 inches today with no real breaks in the deluges. Today’s outlook was rain, rain, and more rain!
As the bus shuttled me up A82 toward Bridge of Orchy, I could see the rain jackets of people walking the 7-mile stretch of West Highland Way that I hiked yesterday. Thank goodness I’d chosen to break this 19-mile section between Tyndrum and Kingshouse over two days. My breakfast companions this morning hadn’t, and they’d be walking the entire distance from Tyndrum to Kingshouse in the 48-degree pouring rain today!
VIEWS OF MY THE GROUND
Days like today were my least favorite type of hiking, and not just because I knew I was going to get drenched. I was mostly disappointed about not being able to take in much of the Scottish Highlands. Having my raincoat’s hood up and the brim of my hat pulled low to keep my face dry, meant the majority of my views would be of the trail directly below my feet.
Even if I’d been able to actively look at my surroundings though, the low clouds and rain pretty much obscured of the natural beauty. There’d vibe no sweeping views of Loch Tulla, or much of anything else today. I already knew the physical discomfort of a cold, wet day could overshadow my other memories of this trek. So I’d just have to work extra hard to find the hidden charm in my environment today.
Even with an upbeat mindset, I had to admit that the first three miles of trail this morning were an absolute mess. Water was running down the center of the trail turning it from the West Highland Way to the West Highland River.
Looking for dry ground wasn’t yielding great results. So after about 10 minutes of pretending like I had any control over the how dry I would stay today, I gave up and just started fording straight through the water. The benefit to surrendering to this inevitability is that you start to move faster through the terrain. And soon I was passing hiker after hiker.
INVERORAN
Despite the challenges on those first few wet miles, I found myself entering the small hamlet of Inveroran well before I’d expected to arrive there. I was ecstatic to see the dirt path transition to a paved lane, and reveled in the reprieve from the deep puddles that made up my morning.
Sadly, Inveroran wasn’t nearly as exciting as the paved road that bisected it. There was one small rural inn for hikers, plus a small souvenir shop selling West Highland Way t-shirts and other paraphernalia. But I don’t think they even had a cafe where I could get a coffee, so I didn’t even bother to stop.
About a mile out of town, my route left the asphalt and turn onto Telford’s Parliamentary Roads. The rough road was something between a gravel road and a cobblestones, but still better than what I’d walked on this morning.
Signs near this transition informed me that the constant horse and stagecoach use made travel throughout the Highlands exceptionally rough and slow. So, in 1801 the UK Government commissioned Thomas Telford (a noted bridge and canal engineer) to rebuild 920 miles of road, erect 1,000 new bridges, and make improvements to the local canals.
This public works project lasted two decades, but Telford’s roads remained in use as the primary road network in the Scottish Highlands until 1933. So I suppose I was literally walking on a piece of history as I hiked north on this stretch of the West Highland Way.
FAMILIAR FACES
The next few miles kept me on the parliamentary roads, which were still in fairly good condition given their 200-year old age. But they also seemed to have two wide wheel ruts running their entire length, which filled with rainwater and was punctuated by occasional pools that spanned the entire width of the roadway.
I spent the next hour or so making a game of trying to find the driest path while simultaneously zoning out to the narrator of the my current audiobook (a fantastic autobiography of Grover Cleveland).
I was brought back into the moment when I saw a small cluster of people sitting on some large rocks beside of the trail up ahead. The rain had temporarily shifted from heavy showers to a more moderate, misty rain, but it wasn’t until I was 20-30 feet away that I could clearly identify them
As the hikers came into sharp focus, I immediately recognized Catherine (the gal I hiked with yesterday) and her two friends, and I waved a quick hello. They’d stopped to eat a snack in the rain, and on a normal day I might have even joined them, but I was just too cold to stop moving.
They were heading to Kingshouse this evening – just like me. So if we were meant to sit and talk, it would be over a pint (or a steaming hot latte) in the comfort of the hotel bar. Not out here on the side of the West Highland Way in the rain.
STUPID PONCHO
As the miles wore on and the wind began to pick up, the thin plastic poncho that I was wearing over my rain gear began obnoxiously whipping around me. It was so loud I couldn’t even listen to my audiobook, and I eventually gave up and put my earbuds away.
My fingers and hands were beginning to hurt from the cold too. I’d stripped off my wool gloves once they got soaked by the rain, and I now had limited options for keeping them warm. I’d tried shoving them inside the cold, clammy pockets of my Gore-tex rain jacket, but that didn’t work great. Then I switched tactics, and decide to cross my arms over the front of the poncho (to keep it from flying up in the wind) and tuck my balled-up hands into my armpits for warmth.
This was a better means of insulation. But I’d later discover that I should have avoided the “armpit” method because it resulted to the lemon yellow color on my poncho transferring onto the surface of my white rain jacket!
Dang it! The whole reason I bought this stupid plastic poncho in Glasgow was to keep my daypack dry so the bright colors wouldn’t bleed onto my rain jacket each time it got wet. I’d already learned the hard way (when I got caught in a rainstorm in Ireland last week) that my white jacket and Cotopaxi daypack were not friends. And it seemed my poncho and rain jacket were equally incompatible.
Instead of returning to the US with the bright white rain jacket I started with, I was mangle it more and more by the day. I now had pink stripes onto the jacket’s shoulders and armpits (from my daypack), and about 1/3 of my jacket now had yellow stains from my cheap plastic poncho. What a friggin mess!
KINGSHOUSE
The clouds eventually started to clear a bit around noon, and I spotted the outline of the Kingshouse Hotel more than a mile before I got there. The hotel looked like a typical Scottish lodge sitting along the River Etieve, but with a zigzag roof that mimicked the three notched ridges of the Glencoe Mountains.
On one of those nearby peaks sat “James Bond Skyfall Road” – a single lane road with insane hairpins that’s been featured in a host of major Hollywood films, including Braveheart, Thor, Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Potter. But it is most famous for the 2012 film Skyfall, starring Daniel Craig (the sexiest James Bond, IMHO).
I wasn’t going to explore this crazy road myself, but did give it a nod as I passed the chairlift at the Glencoe Mountain Resort. And then it was down to the Kingshouse Hotel where I had a reservation at their bunkhouse for the night.
My remarkably fast walking pace in this poor weather allowed me to arrive at my destination just before 1pm. I was still two hours too early to check-in, but I was more than ready to strip off my rain gear and head into the hotel’s restaurant for a hot meal while I waited.
Unfortunately, I’d soon learn the hotel’s restaurant was closed for lunch today because they were hosting a wedding in the dining room. I’d arrived just in time to observe the bride and groom heading into their ceremony proceeded by a bagpiper dressing in a kilt. But then the doors closed behind them, crushing my hopes of a hot meal!
It seemed odd to me that a couple would want to be married in a restaurant, but I would later understand their rationale when I ate dinner there this evening. The couple wasn’t going to have an outdoor wedding ceremony on a crummy weather day like today, but the hotel’s dining room had full length windows that framed the gorgeous Glencoe Mountains outside.
With the restaurant closed for the rest of the afternoon, I had no option but to head over to the hotel’s bar instead. They only had drinks and scones available, so that would have to be my lunch instead of the cheese toastie (a Scottish version of a grilled cheese sandwich) that I’d been dreaming of for the past few rainy hours.
Then I retreated back to the hotel’s lobby where a dozen other West Highland Way hikers were huddled in front of a giant wood-burning fireplace trying to warm up and dry out
We chatted amongst ourselves to pass the time while waiting for the front desk to open at 3 pm, and I saw so many faces I’ve been flip-flopping with these past five days. The four ladies from Idaho. Catherine and her two friends. Jay (a hiker from Hawaii) who was at the same B&B as me in Tyndrum, and at the Drovers Inn, and the Rowardennan Hotel.
And then the desk finally opened so I could get my room assignment and retrieve my luggage with my dry clothes. How wonderful it felt to finally strip off my soggy, wet socks and take a hot shower after this rainy day in Scotland!
