John o’ Groats Trail Day 8.
Distance today: 33.2 miles.
Total distance: 170.1 miles.
Accommodation: hostel.
It has to be a bad sign when you’ve just started out on the road and you are already feeling tired. I had a sense that I was in for another long day. Was this going to be the final day of the John o’ Groats Trail? I tried to do the maths and I think Inverness was at least 25 miles away. Ho hum. Looking on the positive side of things, it was still early enough to have the road pretty much to myself, I was surrounded by pleasant countryside, and up above me there was a beautiful sky.
I arrived in Alness hoping to find a café. Nothing. The next stop was Evanton and it didn’t look like there was much there either. I did manage to get a local to fill up my water bladders so that was a good start. Luckily there was also a co-op where I could stock up on essentials which at that time consisted of bread and peanuts. The bottles of Innocent juice caught my eye and it was nice to drink something sugary sweet for a change.
Eventually made it to the Cromarty Bridge – my third long, wind-swept close encounter with fast moving traffic in 3 days. The cars definitely don’t like to hang about up here. Safely on the other side there was then an unfriendly hill to climb to get to Culbokie. Sadly, it was here where things started to go a bit wrong.
Detour 1: I almost walked a full circle trying to find my way beyond Culbokie. As much as I would like to blame bad signage, there was almost certainly some incompetence thrown into the mix.
Detour 2: There are some woods before you reach Munlochy, and the trail waymarkers happily lead you into these woods. What they don’t do is lead you out. Suddenly you are faced with 3 or 4 directions you can go in with no clues as to which is the right one. God I was angry.
Detour 3: This might not have been a detour but it felt like a detour. Beyond Munlochy, the trail steers you towards Munlochy Bay. You follow the coast for a while before leaving the mud flats behind and heading inland in a seemingly zigzagging route, never entirely confident you are going the right way. Road junctions in particular seemed to be lacking reassuring waymarkers. Eventually after a reasonable amount of uphill you end up in another big wood. On the whole, the scenery was nice. Nice enough to justify the convoluted trail? Not so sure. Again tiredness was almost certainly kicking in and clouding my judgement.
Finally, I caught sight of both Inverness and the Kessock Bridge leading to it. That was a good moment. I was nearly there. Made my way down to the bridge and after crossing it, I played chicken with the traffic to cross the 4 lanes of dual carriageway to get to the steps leading down from the bridge run-off. Bizarrely, the route seemed to thread its way through industrial estates and business parks before it reached the slightly more picturesque River Ness. From there, you followed the river until you arrived at the city centre.
I’d forgotten that it was Saturday night and after 8 days spent largely on my own, it was very strange to see big crowds of people out on the beers. Even more so because I was quietly making my way through the mayhem, in full backpacker gear, dutifully following the little black and white “Southbound John o’ Groats trail” signs. I think the trail ended somewhere near the castle but annoyingly the castle was blocked off for construction work. A bit of an anti-climax. After a quick google, I discovered there was a way to get to the other end of the castle and it was there I found a big stone marking the start of the Great Glen Way. I think that also marked the end of the John o’ Groats trail but it wasn’t particularly obvious that it did. As I said, a bit of an anti-climax but I touched the stone to at least commemorate my version of reaching the end of the trail. Ta-dah!
It might seem an odd way of looking at it but one of the reasons why I saw Inverness as an important milestone was not only because it was the end of the first trail but also because it was a good transport hub to get to if something happened and I had to quit the trek and restart it again later. It was like I was already planning for failure. Ever the optimist.
My next task was to find the Inverness Youth Hostel. I’d booked ahead and reserved a room for 2 nights. As a final confirmation of my poor navigation skills, I got lost again. I’m really not sure I am cut out for this challenge. When I eventually found it and was walking in, there were 2 American guys sat at one of the outside tables with a huge half-finished takeaway feast in front of them. “Are you hungry?”, they asked. As it happens. Once I’d checked in and grabbed a beer, I joined them and gleefully tucked into an array of fast food delights, courtesy of a local Chinese restaurant. My American hosts were from North Carolina, over here cycling through various parts of Scotland. After saying cheerio to them I headed to my room, had a long shower and then just crashed. 33 miles walked today. I think that’s a new personal record.
