loch ness 7 oct, 2018
Day 57 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Laggan to Alltsigh
Distance: 35km
Cumulative distance: 1476km
I spoke to Steve last night (who surprised me in Glasgow) and he said he was on his way up to Inverness for the week to do a training course, and that he’d be driving right past me this morning. The plan was to meet in Fort Augustus for a coffee and maybe an early lunch. That was about 15km away by foot, so I was up and away by 7.30am. Unfortunately I didn’t have newspaper with me, so when I slipped my boots back on they were wet and cold, and within seconds, so were my feet. Although they did warm up when I started moving which was a bonus and the rain seemed to have eased for the moment so I made some sensational time along the relatively flat ground. Laggan marked the end of Loch Lochy, and Fort Augustus the start of Loch Ness. In between the two was the much smaller Loch Oich, alongside which I spent most of the morning. Along this stretch I found a little plaque on the side of a building saying the Queen had disembarked in this spot back in 1958. ‘Geez she’s been in charge a long bloody time,’ I thought as I pressed on.
I arrived at Fort Augustus just before 11, and heard from Steve saying they’d been held up and were running about half an hour late. How about that hey?! Sometimes walking is the best mode of transport. Fort Augustus came as a massive shock. This was the southern tip of Loch Ness, and there were tourists EVERYWHERE, even though it was a grey and fairly miserable looking Monday morning. I weaved carefully between the selfie sticks and landed in the tourist centre which doubled as a cafe. I ignored the stuffed Nessies and other paraphernalia and headed through to the cafe where I ordered a much-needed coffee and waited for Steve. The great man arrived at about 11.45 with his colleague Bart, and quickly offered me a place to stay at his Mum’s place in Invergordon later in the week if I was passing through.
Steve is one of the all-time great men. We met in Iceland in July, 2015 as past of the Thorsmork Trail Team. Chloe and I actually met him the night before we were due to take a bus to Thorsmork – we were all staying at the Reykjavik campsite and I got chatting to Steve in the kitchen. We quickly established we were in Iceland for the same reason, and formed an instant friendship that only strengthened over seven weeks in Iceland. We also went hitchhiking around the south-east corner of the country once the volunteering program had finished before finally going our separate ways. A couple of stories spring to mind about our time together. For New Year’s of 2015-16 Steve organised a house on the west coast of Scotland with his brothers, their partners and a bunch of his uni mates. Chloe and I had Christmas in Australia a week earlier, and to get to Scotland meant undertaking one of the all-time great commutes. We went from Queanbeyan to Sydney, and flew to London. Then about eight hours after landing we took an overnight bus to Glasgow, then another bus over to Fort William from where Steve and his brother picked us up and drove us the rest of the way. It was early afternoon on New Year’s Eve when we arrived. I had a glass of red wine then to celebrate, and probably had my last drink about 16 hours later around the 6am mark. We had one more night in the house, then were off to Aberdeen where Steve was studying. His mate Bruce, who I’d met at the New Year’s house, was going back home for a week and generously offered me his dorm room at the university so I could spend a week hanging out with Steve. Our ride back to Aberdeen was in Chris’s (Steve brother’s) van. Chris, his partner Laura and their mate Sam rode up front. Steve, myself, Chloe, the rather large and excitable dog, and all of our luggage and left over food was stuffed into the back. And so we proceeded, four hours across the country in a state of hungover jetlag with me convinced I was in some kind of wacky dream. That feeling only became stronger when Chris was forced to stop the van, and a rather agitated Scotsman jumped out of the car in front and stormed over to the driver’s side window accusing our driver of tailgating. His colourful and creative vocabulary made Billy Connolly look like a choir boy. For a moment we thought he was going to punch on with Chris. Unbeknownst to him, there were a bunch of us in the back of the van ready to spring out and lend our assistance if required. The moment passed without incident and we eventually made it to the dark, cold, windy, rainy confines of Aberdeen. I’ve never been so jetlagged in my life.
A couple of weeks later Steve, myself, and his housemate Ryan (another top, top bloke) decided we’d hire a car and drive down to the Cairngorms to tackle Lochnagar, one of the biggest, baddest mountains in Scotland. Those paying attention will have noted it was midway through January at this point, aka the middle of winter. Naively I figured there’d be a bit of snow towards the top that we’d need to haul ourselves through but otherwise we’d have a pretty good run. I should’ve assumed differently when we pulled into the carpark and the temperature gauge said -4 degrees. We went for it anyway, and Steve managed to get himself horizontal about a metre in the air when he slipped on the icy bridge over to the trail head. He recovered, we walked through a beautiful little green forest, then hit the snowline. This stuff was super deep, and with no trail to work with we just followed footsteps. After about three hours of slogging our way through the freezing powder, we came across two scientists who had been measuring recent avalanche activity. A few hundred metres further along we came to a stretch of the walk called Jacob’s Ladder which proved almost impassable without crampons. We decided to stop there, spying a much smaller peak off in the distance to tackle instead. At the base of that hill we stopped for lunch and within five minutes all three of us were almost frozen solid as a blizzard descended. Not good, we thought, and rapidly began to retrace our steps back to the carpark. There were occasions where we fell into loose piles of snow which were almost head height. But we eventually made it back down and learned our lesson about respecting the Scottish hills. Vastly more experienced hikers and climbers are killed in the Scottish hills each year, and it’s easy to see why.
There was also the time we were set to go sailing around the Isle of Skye. This was the start of our trip with Chris, Laura, Sam, Elliott and Charlotte that ended in us getting eaten alive by midgies. We’d all loaded our stuff onto the boat, and just had the safety briefing before deciding to set off. Unfortunately the thing managed to get stuck in neutral, which we didn’t realise until we’d pushed away from the mooring. It meant we floated slowly but surely towards the rocks on the edge of the marina, and were powerless to stop the yacht crashing straight into them. The man in charge took a dinghy out to meet us with a stricken look on his face, and told us we were no longer allowed to sail the boat given their could be serious damage to the hull which would significantly increase our chances of sinking. We had to disembark with our tails between our legs, and spent almost a week camping on Skye instead. The next day we heard conditions around the Isle of Skye were absolutely horrendous for sailing and would be for the next week. It’s funny how things work out.
In any event it was bloody good to see Steve again, and I told him I would see him in a couple of days at his Mum’s house. I stayed in that cafe for almost two hours, then grabbed a few supplies before leaving town. The loch expanded quickly to my right, and I soon came to a sign offering me the opportunity to take the easier low road, or the high road which would mean a climb up to 300m with a stack of majestic views as the reward. The climb was pretty strenuous and the rain was back by this stage but I couldn’t do much about that. I just dreamed of the views over the water when I made it to the top and continued to power on. When I finally crested I looked back over to the water, but all I could see was the deep cloud of mist which had descended over the loch. Fortunately I was up on the top of a long ridge, and as I proceeded towards Invermoriston, the cloud lifted and revealed a spectacular scene. The loch was a rich blue, and looked every bit as deep as it was – 132m in some parts. Caroline once told me Loch Ness contains more fresh water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, and to see the thing from this height was an incredible experience. For all the tourism the Loch provides Scotland, there are still stretches along its length where you can have it to yourself, and this was one of them. The path continued along, rising up and down on occasion before a huge downhill had to be navigated into Invermoriston. The path then veered almost a mile inland from the loch before swinging back around and finally plonking me in town.
I was soaked through again by this point and was starting to forget what the sun looked like. Those thoughts soon evaporated as I took a look at the hill I needed to walk up on my way out of town. This was via the road and it seemed to go on forever before finally turning back into a track through the trees. It was still more than five kilometres to my hostel and I was getting pretty keen for a rest having belted out 70km in the last two days. The forest was dark green and endlessly mysterious in the dark grey of the late day, but I didn’t take too much time to appreciate it all. When I came to another sign offering me the high road or the low, I took the latter this time because my hostel was right down on the banks of the loch. You’d struggle to find a more beautiful spot. When I arrived the lad on reception upgraded me to a single room (geez there are some good folk in these parts) and I headed straight for the shower. I reckon I’ll sleep pretty well tonight.
