Today we left Inversnaid and headed for Bridge of Orchy
Today we had Mike and Graeme walking with us and Karen kindly taking our bags up to Bridge of Orchy.
Overnight there were three things of concern (for me anyway) about today (more about those later).
Rain was promised for the whole day and, by and large, the weather delivered. We started off with quite a hike downhill to the Inversnaid Pier and the turning onto the West Highland Way. Mike left his nice red car all alone in the car park – hope it’s there when he returns in a few days.
We started out on the path with memories of last year – we were already wet and tired, it was dark and we got lost once. So concern number one was that it would be as bad as last year. Happily it was tough but not nearly as much as we through and the forest protected us from much of the downpour.
After the very rocky bit the path evened out somewhat, although there was quite a steep set of “stairs” towards the end and various swearwords could be heard from the back! We then started the next section of the route which runs alongside the River Falloch. Concern number two was that a bridge was “missing” last year and this necessitated a detour through and down a muddy field to the next bridge. Anyway the bridge was still out but the concern was alleviated as we skipped across the river on some conveniently placed rocks and avoided the detour (last picture above).
After the walk by the river, we met Karen and handed Graeme back over as he had only planned to walk half of the day (the hardest part) with us. We then started on the third section of the day. This was concern number 3 – the route is so convoluted and phone signal (for the map) is so random. No need to worry though, the route was well signposted as we climbed high up into the forest and then trudged down the inevitable slope too eventually get to Tyndrum and some hot food in the Green Welly Stop. At this stage we were well and truly soaked, despite the waterproofs, so the food was very much needed.
After Tyndrum we started on the fourth, and final, stretch of the day. With all earlier concerns alleviated all we had to worry about was the rain, wind, soaked feet and tiredness. The volume of water falling from the sky was reflected in the speed of rivers, waterfalls and even a rainbow at one stage. We arrived at our stay for the night very, very tired and very, very wet – bizarrely we all agreed is was also a very enjoyable day.
Tomorrow we head further along the West Highland Way towards Kinlochleven.
