the great glen way 6 oct, 2018
Day 56 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Fort William to Laggan
Distance: 37km
Cumulative distance: 1441km
Well it turned into a marvellous albeit hungover weekend in Fort William. A pretty sodden 37km first leg of the Great Glen Way brought me back to reality pretty quickly, but we shall get to that in a short while. Firstly, we have a couple of nights in Fort Billy Boy to take care of.
It took me about 20 minutes to find my hostel after leaving the Scottish lads at the Wetherspoons at about 6pm on Friday night. Google Maps was off, I had to climb up a pretty offensive hill and I was already entering some kind of drunken haze. But I managed to find it and check in without too much trouble, and even suggest to the New Zealand lass I was sharing a dorm room with that she should hit the town tonight. I had a quick shower, dolled myself up as best I could (hiking pants, a long-sleeved thermal and thongs) and shot back out of the hostel towards the Spoons. There was a sign at the front door of the hostel telling me to take a photograph of the door code on the way out. I wisely took the advice and then picked my way back to the main drag through the fading light, ready to see what Fort William had to offer on a Friday night.
The Scottish lads had ducked out for a curry, but Rory and Michel were both in there, and a fella from Belgium who I think spells his name Stien. He’d met Rory earlier on in the piece along the West Highland Way, and proved to be a ripping bloke also. I ordered myself a feed (three main meals for 10 pounds), and as I gorged myself on some ribs, David and Iain came back in. They quickly resumed their role of buying me drinks, and now they upped the ante coming back with a pint of beer and a dram of Glengoyne whisky after every visit to the bar. I found myself quadruple parked for the first time in my life, so lifted my pace again. This went on for almost two hours before David and Iain decided it was time to go – they had a pretty early train in the morning and were still carting their hiking gear around since they hadn’t even checked in. We bid them farewell, and they told me I was welcome in Fife any time. I can’t wait to go and visit them one day.
The rest of us were just getting started and we kicked on, tracking down a pub with some ordinary live music before the group split and then reunited in a place called the Volunteer Arms. There was about 20-odd folk who had done the West Highland Way in there! It was the only place to be after midnight and I was there until about 3.30am until I decided about six hours too late that it was time for me to take myself home. A light rain had began to fall but I managed to find myself back to the hostel without too much trouble. Thank God I took a picture of the door code, I thought as I whipped my phone out. I couldn’t wait to get out of this bitter cold and soak up a few hours sleep. I pressed the home button on my phone and realised with horror that it was completely dead.
“This is not good,” I muttered in my slow-witted, inebriated state.
No one came to the door after I pounded on it for five minutes (I know, what a dick move), so I looked around and decided my best bet was to crawl under one of the cars parked nearby and try and get comfortable. Then a brilliant idea hit me. The window! I went around the side of the hostel and tried shifting the first window. It wouldn’t budge. I pressed on and had a bit more success on the second window, which opened to reveal another window which wouldn’t budge. Crossing my fingers, I hoped for a case of third-time lucky as I tried the next window. They were both unlocked! I fumbled them open, then climbed up onto the ledge and fell into the place backwards, fortunately landing on a couch in the common room. No one in the hostel had stirred despite the racket I was making so I continued on up the stairs to my dorm room. I fumbled around with the key and managed to get the lock open after about five minutes. Then I spied a vacant bottom bed, so I collapsed onto that ignoring the top bunk I’d been assigned. I slept in quite late the next morning, and no one was the wiser…
I did my usual chores on Saturday, walking almost 2km out of town just to get my washing done. I found a pub at lunchtime showing the Leeds game and then a bunch of us caught up for beers and a curry that night. There was Rory and I, the twins Gav and Rich, plus Stefan and James – a couple of mates from Cheshire who I hadn’t bumped into on the walk, but who proved to be sensational lads. Stefan suggested we have a WHW reunion in five years time, and we all traded contact details and promised to catch up again at some point in the future before finishing up for the night. I shall also mention here that Stefan is a Celtic fan, and we agreed to one day reconvene at Celtic Park to watch the boys in action – a day I am very much looking forward to.
By the time Sunday morning came around the rain had settled back in, and I cleared out of the hostel knowing I had a huuuge day ahead of me. I was aiming for Laggan which had a hostel but it was almost 40km distant along the Great Glen Way. This particular footpath was created as a logical extension to the West Highland Way, and takes you from Fort William all the way up to Inverness, following Scotland’s Great Glen fault line which runs from the south west to the north east and effectively splits the country in half. It follows the length of three bodies of water – Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and finally Loch Ness, and runs for 117km. I was planning to use most of the path, but I would be shaving Inverness off and aiming straight for the Black Isle which I figured would save me about a day. After walking back down the hill I went to the shops and then finally found the trail head for the Great Glen Way. It takes you a roundabout way through Caol and then finally to the Caledonian Canal. By the time I made it to the Neptune’s Staircase it was almost midday and I still had 30-odd km in front of me. Neptune’s Staircase is pretty cool. The roughly 200-year-old structure boasts eight locks and is the longest staircase lock in the UK. Boats are lifted about 20m by the time they take the 90-minute journey through the engineering marvel. I powered past the thing in minutes then put my head down and tried to chew through some miles. The path was straight forward and pretty well flat so I was able to lay down a pretty cracking tempo through the persistent rain.
A couple of cool boats came past me along the canal, which eventually fed into Loch Lochy. I walked along its northern bank and the low hanging mist provided lovely views out across the water which seemed to disappear into the sky. The path seemed to take a gentle uphill for a long way along the loch, and there wasn’t much downhill to offset it. i just kept going, passing through Clunes and finally arriving at Laggan Locks after eight hours of pretty solid walking. That marked the end of Loch Lochy, and I crossed the canal once more passing a barge on the water which had been turned into a pub, and walked another kilometre or so down the road to the hostel. By the time I plodded inside I didn’t have a dry square inch on my entire body. I met Erin at the front desk and she was an absolute Godsend, immediately upgrading me to a single room and telling me all about their dry room, and shower facilities and all sorts of wondrous things I was craving in my bedraggled state. I went and sorted myself out, had a feed and then got chatting to Erin for about an hour about travel and hiking and Scotland. She’s a Scottish local who had been at the hostel for a few months, but was soon to leave it and take up a posting on the snowfields in France. She showed me an awesome book which outlined the location of every bothy in Scotland making me realising just how much more of the country there was still to explore. For now though, I had to get myself up the rest of this Great Glen Way and up towards John O’Groats. The end was drawing near but there were still a good few hundred kilometres to cover.
