LEJOG Day 77: Tyndrum to Kingshouse

Weather: Mostly sunny with a late shower

Distance covered today: 29.6km (18.4mi)

Last night's B&B: West Highland Lodge (£35)

Cumulative distance: 1568.2km (974.4mi)/ % Complete: 82.0%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 77 (click!)

The weather certainly played its part, in that it elevated a superlative experience to the sublime.  Without even trying, today’s leg is right up there, in the top two for the whole journey to date! In fact, it might even have nicked first place from the Tweeddale hike through High Cup to Dufton, were it not for the incredible variation in the earlier leg and its glorious isolation.  It is becoming easier and easier to see why the West Highland Way is becoming so popular: the walking is relatively easy by comparison to either the Pennine Way or Offa’s Dyke, because the path is so well maintained and the scenery is both varied and beautiful beyond description. The only problem is the numbers of people on the Way, so that there is almost never a time when you can’t see someone either ahead or behind, and of course I have previously been very spoiled!  And then there are the weather and the Scottish midges!  So far I am coping with the midges, but only by keeping constantly on the move. Even stopping for lunch has become a luxury I can’t afford; not if I don’t wish to become lunch for a swarm of the little pests.

Today’s walk went by in a flash, despite being amongst the longer of the journey to date. No doubt, not stopping helped, but also the walking was dead easy. Most of the way runs along the old military road built by General Wade after 1724 in his efforts to find a way of pacifying the uppity Highlanders. The military road runs from the Lowlands all the way to Fort William, and the WHW follows it, off and on, from the end of Loch Lomond northwards. Interestingly, the Way deviates from Wade’s military road over much of the magnificent Rannoch Moor. Here the Way runs along an old Drover’s road, built by none other than Thomas Telford, who was commissioned by the government in London to build the so-called Parliamentary Roads. According to an information placard that I passed along the Way, he chose to build these commercial roads with “gentler gradients” lower on the hills than the military road and with bigger bridges to cope with the burns which would of course be larger the lower the road. He used box culverts instead of cobbled fords to reduce wear and tear on carriage springs, and he insisted on a “good” depth of gravel to prevent damage to the hooves of the animals using the road. Today, the WHW is the beneficiary of all this innovation.

The comparison with the Pennine Way is interesting. Rannoch Moor is as beautiful as anything I saw on the Pennines, but it just seems more so! I am now firmly in the camp of those softies who think that providing a secure and easy path across the Pennines would greatly benefit that spectacular walk by making it much more accessible and enjoyable. The problem with yomping across a moor, quite apart from the environmental damage, is that you are forever concentrating on the next step with your eyes riveted to the ground just ahead. Looking at the scenery is an invitation to step wilfully into muddy oblivion, so that you only look around when you stagger to a halt. The going is difficult and fraught, and only the well-seasoned and really tough will enjoy that sort of experience. Flitting across both Wade’s and Telford’s roads today was a real pleasure. No wonder I saw hardly anybody on the poorer sections of the Pennine Way. And of course, the less people that use it, the less distinct the path itself and the greater the chance of making navigational errors and sinking ever deeper into the mud!

I was thinking these things earlier today, when all of a sudden I heard someone right behind my right shoulder. I recognised the Antipodean accent immediately. It was General Freyberg, of course (who the longer suffering may recall first attracted my attention on my training run on the North Downs way back in March) . I hadn’t heard from him for many a long leg, and it must have been General Wade who alerted him to my presence.

“So you haven’t given up, yet?” he asked, sounding a little surprised.

“No!” I said.

“Your pack looks a little light. Don’t tell me you are using Sherpas to carry it for you?”

“Yes, I am! But only for the national trails”, I said, defensively and then regretted it. “I never said that I wouldn’t use help along the way. After all, my motto for the journey was always ‘Flectes, non franges!’ I could have carried the full pack all the way, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself as much!”

“So, this is all about hedonistic pleasure, is it? What about duty and self-sacrifice? What about proving that you have the guts to take the rough with the smooth?”

“To what end?” I asked. “Who do you want me to impress? This isn’t a duty. This is a journey, but mostly an internal journey. What’s more, look at your colleague, General Wade. He built this road at places heading steeply uphill, when it would have been a lot easier to follow the contours. He had a horse! He wasn’t thinking about his soldiers carrying all that heavy equipment up hill and down dale, was he?  Hard isn't always right!”

“General Wade had his own blind spots!” said Freyberg, but I detected a slight change in his attitude; not exactly a warming, but a softening of the glint in his eye. I realised he genuinely hadn’t imagined I’d make it this far. He went on his way without further comment.

As the weather steadily deteriorated, I caught myself appreciating the phenomenal effect of the changing lighting on the peaks and the moors around me. Earlier in this journey, I would have been thinking only about the increasing likelihood of me being drenched, rather than about the aesthetic impact of the changing light.

General Freyberg probably wouldn’t have appreciated the magnitude of that change!

The view from my bedroom window last night

The lovely textures of the hill slopes outside Tyndrum

By now I was on General Wade's road. The mountain on the right is Beinn Dorain

General Wade's road tended to be Romanesque in that it went as straight as it could. I read in my guide though that the Romans actually "worked faster, used better surveying techniques, and were more careful about such important matters as drainage than their successors"!

Water pouring down a granite surface

One of General Wade's original bridges

Heather in profusion

Looking down at Loch Tulla from Mam Carraigh

Every now and then, there would be this little thicket of trees. These were covered in multi-coloured moss and lichen

My first objective for the day. The hotel at Inveroran, though I only stopped for a coke

And then it was on to the magnificent Rannoch Moor

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Multi-coloured mountains from Rannoch Moor

A lochan on Rannoch Moor. Were it not for Telford's Drover's road, I'd still be out there!

The weather was changing and the effect was nothing short of dramatic

Suddenly a ski-lift! How incongruous!

Towards the end of Rannoch Moor and on every side, a vista beyond comparison.

A red deer browsing on the moor near journey's end at Kingshouse Hotel