Great Glen Way, part 1

Wednesday 21st July 2004

On my first walking holiday in Scotland  after doing the West Highland Way, I had planned to do the Great Glen Way, but the previous evening I had considered walking up the Mamores, but in the end, for some reason, I didn’t wake up till 8.40 so I would have found it difficult to catch the 9.25 bus, unless I hurried, which I really couldn’t be bothered to do because the weather was awful; it was raining and there were very low clouds over the hills, so I chickened out of walking in the Mamores and went back to plan A. Frankly, I just didn’t want to be not getting to the Loch Ness Youth Hostel until 7.30 p.m. as I don’t like messing around on public transport at the end of a tiring day's walk. I think a car would be much easier when in the Highlands because the area is so large.

Back to this walk, I headed into Fort William and caught a bus to Fort Augustus, where, after buying lunch, I headed off along the Great Glen Way beside Loch Ness. The weather had improved enormously now that I was away from the mountains of the West Highlands as it was now hot and sunny and I was wearing sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, with loads of sun cream. I had my lunch overlooking Loch Ness and it was just as I remembered from when I was last in the area in 2000: an eerie looking loch with hidden secrets under its surface. No one would call it a beautiful loch, like Loch Lomond, but it does attract your attention. Going further along the trail I descended into the small, picturesque village of Invermoriston before ascending the steep hill opposite and continuing along the trail to the Loch Ness Youth Hostel at Alltsigh.

As lovely as the weather was for this walk it wasn't that enjoyable as it kept largely to forestry tracks so I was in doubt on what to do the next day. I certainly didn’t want to walk all thirty miles to Inverness or get there late, so I was thinking of catching a bus to Drumnadrochit and starting from there.

Ben Nevis for the first time

Tuesday 20th July 2004

The first time I went up Ben Nevis was immediately after walking the West Highland Way and frankly I wasn’t impressed. While considering the ascent afterwards I decided that the problem was that the path is too easy, a bridlepath for tourists and I got very little thrill out of it. There are too many zigzags that mean it isn’t very steep at any point, in fact it took me almost as long to go up as I did coming back down. I was finished in less than five hours! And then there’s the summit: besides the trig point and the well-known ruin of an observatory there is a war memorial, which is good, except that it’s been littered by dozens of personal memorials left by many people over the last five years. It’s beginning to look like a dumping ground complete with badges, banners and the pictures of tragically departed children. The worst thing about these personal memorials is that the older, more important, memorials have been callously cast aside and broken. I was not desperate to go up again. Back down I visited the Glen Nevis Visitor Centre again before heading back to the hostel where I considered what to do for the rest of the holiday. The weather forecast for this walk was for a good start but deteriorating later (it was still raining when I wrote the first draft of this entry in the hostel later in the afternoon, and it actually started raining while I was on the summit). The forecast for the next day looked like it may clear as the day progressed, so an idea occurred to me to do a walk in the hills to the south of Glen Nevis, in the Mamores, before heading to Fort William and catching a bus to Loch Ness. Certainly the Great Glen Way didn't appeal to me, which is what doing the West Highland Way had taught me. I have been up Ben Nevis again since this report was originally written (the picture above was taken on that return trip, in much better weather) and I have to say that I enjoyed the ascent much more the second time as I went up via the CMD arête. The report on that trip is here.