Thursday 15 May 2014

Day seven, Kinglochleven to Fort William, Saturday 10th May.


We left our luxury B&B having had a substantial breakfast!

The guidebook had us down for 15 miles, we had a train to catch so we had to crack on.
Camera was packed away as rain was forecast for the day, we set off in water-proofs a gentle walk through the village the Way turns right up a track, there was a notice about a meeting at Lundavra that hopefully wouldn't disrupt the pleasure of the walk.

As we walked up the first part of the track a couple on mountain bikes came skidding to halt.

A gentle rise through some woods, we could hear a motorcycle engine in the distance, before long a trials bike zoomed passed us, this would keep happening for the next couple of hours, as we walked up the track zig zagging,to ease the gradient, not to strenuous a climb.





Once we had cleared the woodland there were views down into Loch Leven and the Pap of Glencoe, further on we could see Beinn na Caillich on our side of the Loch.



We now had a gentle walk uphill for about 4 miles reaching a height of 1100 feet at the top of the pass between the hills on our left and the Mamores on our right.



There was the continual interruption of the trial bikes as we continued our walk, try as i might to capture these fast moving bikes with my glorified point and shot, it was very hit and miss!



The Way eventually swings north following the glen around the west end of the Mamores, there has been a major tree felling operation that has taken place ages ago, now the landscape looks bleak and stark with all the tree stumps left upturned.






Gives views across to Lochan Lunn Da-Bhra, there is an information board telling us we are half way, it is here that the Way leaves the military road, and strikes up a short steep hill, Blar a Chaorainn.



When we had reached the summit we stopped for our final lunch taking in the views north west over an invisible Fort William, and north east towards Ben Nevis, the view back was hidden by the hill we had just skirted round.


From here we dropped height and walked in the Nevis Forest, the views were limited occasional glimpses of a cloud shrouded Ben.




We walked through more felled forest and climbed again to pass over the col and drop into Glen Nevis. We didn't stop and take a look at the Dun Deardail Iron Age fort but pressed on on a forest track that swept back and forth down the hillside.



We came to a diversion where there was a temporarily path laid nearly straight down the forest side lots of tight zig zags and eventually came out on the forest track again. Here we stopped and I changed into my shorts as the sun was out and it was a very pleasant afternoon walk through the forest. There was a signpost for the town centre via the Braveheart car park, but we kept to the Way and came out of the wood nearly opposite the Glen Nevis Centre.

There was then an arduous walk along the road, past the Braveheart car park and into Fort William. Pass the original terminus stopping at the Woollen Mill shop to collect our official West Highland Way completion certificate!

The Finish is now in the town centre following the pedestrianised high street and into Gordon Square, where we had the compulsory photograph taken sitting with the seated statue.


We had completed the walk, today we had walked 14.01 miles according to the GPS climbed 2241 foot, max ascent was 1109 ft, the heart rate monitor had my heart rate max out at 164, using 4391 calories.

It had been a fantastic walk, arrived in early went to Morrisions for a pot of tea, and a bagful of dressings for Allan's blistered feet.
The train journey back to Crianlarich was spectacular up to Spean Bridge and down by Loch Treig to Corrour Station pass the east end of Blackwater Reservoir, Rannoch Station and back to civilisation at the Bridge of Orchy and in to Crianlarich.
For an overnight stay in the B&B before setting off home on the Sunday morning.

The GPS has us having walked 95.59 miles in total.

In summary we had a fantastic time, both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, the weather was kind for Scotland.

Writing a Blog was more difficult than I imagined on an Iphone, I used an LX5 Panasonic camera, had an Eyefi wifi card in the camera to transfer the images to the Iphone at the end of each day. I had a Peak Design Capture PRO camera clip complete with Micro plate, this allowed me when the weather was dry to keep the camera attached to a strap on my rucksack so it was always ready and available, this worked seamlessly.
On the Iphone I used Snapseed to do some very basic post processing the small jpeg that I used to illustrate the Blog, the images on  the Iphone look OK but once home and reading the Blog on a calibrated screen the colours are slightly off compared to the RAW images I have imported to  Lightroom.
The real problem was lack of 3G or wifi in the B&B each night so hence the delay in getting the Blog finished and posted.

1 Comments:

At 17 May 2014 at 08:29 , Blogger Dave Butcher said...

Congratulations. Pleased to hear you didn't stop at Crianlarich but did the whole route.

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home