Great Glen Way Day 3.
Distance today: 24.5 miles.
Total distance: 241.7 miles.
Accommodation: wild camping.
Not too early a start but with windows closed and radiators on, I decided the dorm was way too warm to hang around once I’d woken up. Moved to one of the sofas in the communal area to relax a while before summoning up the energy to get on the move again. At some point on yesterday’s mountain misadventure I’d lost one of my water bladders. It was annoying but I found a temporary replacement after a visit to the local supermarket. The soon-to-be-empty bottle of Lucozade would do fine for now.
While I had briefly skirted past the Caledonian Canal when I was leaving Inverness, today we were destined to spend a lot more time together. And what do we like about canals or, more specifically, tow paths? Level ground. As canals go, it seemed quite wide to me. And that wasn’t even when it opened out into a loch. Not much in the way of narrowboat traffic. In fact there didn’t seem much boat traffic at all. Every so often, the trail would head up into forestry land where there was some industrial-scale harvesting going on. One JCB-like digger would drag the freshly cut tree up the slope where another machine swiftly removed the branches, cut it to size, and added it to the stockpile. I spoke to one of the guys working there and he said that some of the plantations were over 100 years old. He also reckoned that some of the big trees should have been culled about 50 years ago. That’s why you saw so many that had fallen over. They had grown too big for their shallow roots. I understood that the trees were a cash crop but it didn’t stop me feeling sad that the landscape looking so brutally scarred once swathes of trees had been cleared.
Looking on the map, I’d spotted there was a campsite near to Gairlochy and even though it meant another long day, I liked the idea of an easy run into Fort William tomorrow. As I got closer, I rang them up to make a booking only to be told they were just doing lodges now. Wild camping it is then. I did pass some so-called Trailblazer sites which were very basic campsites right by the side of the loch. The locations were lovely and I probably should have stopped at one of them but I decided to press on.
By the time I reached Gairlochy, I was running low on water but happily found some people chatting outside a house and they kindly did the honours. Took the opportunity to ask them if they knew anywhere I could wild camp and they suggested some flat ground near the Top Lock. It was just a couple of minutes around the corner and turned out to be a perfect spot which had obviously been used many times before. In fact, there was a couple setting up camp when I arrived.
Matt and Maria were a lovely couple. He was English and she was Dutch. Both classical singers, living in Holland. Matt had a very easy-going confidence, and for a while I was convinced he was someone famous, travelling incognito. But no. Not unless you were familiar with members of the Dutch radio choir. We chatted about our trips – they were just doing the Great Glen Way this time but had hopes of doing more. It was funny how we had clearly done very similar Internet research in preparation for our trips – ultralight forums, LDWA, and even Liam Brown’s Jogle video. One thing they did have in their possession was a magic key. By paying a small fee you could make use of this key to give you access to all the toilet/shower facilities along the Great Glen Way. Of course they didn’t let me use the key. Because that would have been wrong.
A slightly strange but tasty Blå Band beef with potato and bearnaise for tea and then bed, still wondering if any of those snow-capped mountains I had been seeing later in the day (and was getting closer to) was Ben Nevis.
