Wandering Through Scotland Part 4

We were hoping, after a peaceful night beside Loch Poulary, to re-acquaint ourselves with the otter as we sat and ate breakfast, looking across the water. The otter stayed secluded but it was a nice, dry morning. We set off towards an area which was called East Glenquoich Forest on the map. After a brief traverse along a small one lane road we headed off into what was supposed to be a forest. Or maybe it was just once a forest. Now, there was a patch of hillside fenced- off with a few anaemic looking saplings and a group of red deer that had obviously hopped the fence. Across the valley was an enormous expanse of devastation where once there stood rows of forestry. It was an inauspicious start to our day. But, things started to improve drastically as we reached the top of the pass, and the Glenshiel mountains came into view.  The descent into Glen Loyne was relatively easygoing and there are signs of regeneration around us. The valley floor was bare but we found a few nice stones to sit on and eat a light lunch. We sat around and chatted away. Entirely alone in this massive landscape. Free to eat a chocolate bar, smoke a cigarette and then pick up our bags and lope off towards the next hill.

We began our, by now, typical routine of trying to reach the one pub on our route before they stopped serving lunch. Today, our target was the Cluanie Inn. We passed the edge of the Cluanie Forest, a barren and largely treeless expanse, at around 2pm. It seemed like it could go either way. There was also the very real chance that the pub would have closed down. There was no more heart wrenching feeling. We had Loch Cluanie stretching out below us and we could see that the road which runs along the far side was extremely busy. It was full of campervans and motorbikes and everything else. This was a great sign, chances are the pub would be serving this stream of people.

We were emerging out of relative isolation and it was going to be quite nice to have a few faces around. The path was one of those that never end. Every corner had to be the last corner before we would be arriving but instead there was another twist and surely the last corner in front of us. This carried on for another hour and it was looking very unlikely that we would be tucking into something warm. Finally we crossed the bridge with the pub in sight. We barely said a word to each other in the hope that we wouldn’t jinx it. Sheepishly we opened the door to a worryingly empty pub. We were met by friendly faces behind the bar who said they were doing pizza all day!! All the tension left us both, we ordered two and went to sit outside in the sun. Our vision returned and we looked around us with a bit more care. All over the place there were campervans and hatchbacks filled with young people. Beside the loch there were a string of tents. It turns out the Cluanie Inn sits right beside the North Coast 500. All of a sudden we were surrounded by young people finally free from lockdown, too. That night we camped beside the loch too and spent our first night in Scotland with other campers around us. We also took an extra pizza back with us to have in our tent. We slept soundly and relished the chance to wander back off into the wild again in the morning. Pizza has a way of inspiring one to push oneself physically…after a good night’s sleep, of course!

That following morning, we crossed the main road and walked towards the top of Glen Affric. I wish that we had the energy to descend all the way to the lower glen and see the regeneration which has happened but as it was we simply could not be arsed to walk all those extra miles. We saw the very top of this beautiful glen, covered in squares of regenerating hillside. It was an incredibly uplifting place. We could see how it would look in thirty years. It will be an amazing landscape again. Whilst we were looking around admiring the scenery, Will managed to go up to his knee in a bog. It was a gentle reminder from the Scottish Highlands to pay attention.

A walk past Camban bothy saw us surrounded by the extensive ruins of former crofts. Large walls remained and the intricate network of houses that were once up here must have been a real sight to see. It would have been an amazing place to live. Pretty chilly, though. We wound down the path into our third treeless forest in a few days. Kintail Forest, as it is marked on the maps, was a pretty valley floor grazed to nothing by an army of sheep. One day maybe it will recover. The flat valley floor provided an amazing place for us to camp though and a still, warm evening meant we did not require the shelter of a forest. We dipped our toes in the freezing water of the River Croe and cooked our dinner on the stony beach. We were starting to feel pretty damn lucky now the sun was out most days.

The next day it was clear sunshine, fog clung to the top of the mountains around us and we got up and out in the early light. It was the kind of day that makes you feel as though you have cheated somehow. We strolled into Morvich, the fact there was no shop and the only supplies we could get was Kendal Mint Cake and some dehydrated pasta from a campsite shop made no difference to our mood. We followed a stream up from Morvich amongst a wooded path with a carpet of bluebells around us. As we grew closer to Dorusdain Wood we were greeted by actual trees! It was not just the maps that thought there was life here this time. Okay, large chunks of this woodland were rows of plantation trees but in amongst this was a living ecosystem.

We wound upwards, pretty sharply, heading in the directions of the Falls of Glomach. It was quite a popular route and dog walkers passed us by with a nod and a smile. After a long set of false peaks we reached the falls and found a nice rock to sit on with a view of the cascading water. The tight gully had this thin waterfall pouring noisily through. It was a great spot to eat a Kendal Mint Cake and think about where we wanted to camp that night. The path away from the falls in the direction of Loch Na Leitreach was pretty precarious. It was very narrow and with a sharp drop away to our right. Without a twenty-odd kilo backpack on it would have been fine but with that destabilising weight on our backs it felt a little nervy. The thing with falling or slipping whilst you have that much weight on your back is that it is very hard to right yourself quickly. Especially for a pair of untrained amateurs who had just decided to pack a bag and start walking. We made it down unscathed and as we stopped to wash our faces in a small stream a very friendly Scottish hill-walker came from the other direction. He was an interesting and smiley man and again could not have been more friendly. We took his advice to camp by the loch just a bit further down and we found a nice sheltered spot. In hindsight we realised it was not very level at all and we spent most of the night pulling ourselves back up from the bottom of the tent.

It is interesting how when we began this trip, we had to put everything into climbing any hill that came our way. Gradually we must have been getting stronger and fitter but you don’t notice this gradual change. It only becomes apparent when suddenly you have just climbed a hill whilst chatting away. The regular stops to gulp down some air aren’t needed and whatever you were nattering about continues uninterrupted. I was incredibly lucky to go on an adventure like this with Will. He is the perfect person for it. Calm and easygoing we never had any arguments or tension apart from occasionally when I got a little bit hungry. He would sit me down and go and get a snack and that would be that. Now, he is living in Chile and thinking of this journey makes me miss him.

The sun decided we had been pampered enough and took a day off. Under this cloudy sky we wandered a depressing landscape to the Maol Budhe bothy. It was barren and it was silent. Great ‘peat hags’ (the term used to describe eroded patches of peat) lay around us. It was a difficult landscape to cross and a depressing sight. Inside the open wounds in this decrepit valley were the cut stumps of a former forest. Evidence or a richer past. An example of what could be recovered. As we walked around Loch Calavie we were met with a string of dead red deer. Most likely shot as part of the culling process. Their stinking carcasses announced minutes before by the wind as the breeze carried this unmistakable smell of death. It created an unwelcoming atmosphere. We walked on for a while on plain gravel tracks with little of note around us. Eventually we made it to a flat and dry patch of land beside a small stream and chose that as our spot for the evening. We had a small amount of signal, a rarity in the Highlands, and with this we managed to check the weather and see that we had a week of sunshine coming our way. A very exciting prospect.

The following day we were up and walking in shorts. As the day grew hotter we sheltered in shade for the first time. Ticks gleefully flung themselves onto our legs but it was so hot we had no choice but to be in shorts. We were lucky not to have any issues from the ticks because they are abundant and there is no effective spray. Just don’t sit on the grass; and, check yourself a few times a day and then you should be okay. The heat came and we needed a break. The next few days in my diary are blank and my principal memory is arriving in the small town of Ullapool and taking three days off to stay in a charming B&B with views of the sea loch, eating some seafood and lying in the sun. Ullapool is situated beside a beautiful sea loch and it is both the gateway to the Western Islands as well as a major hub for seafood exporters. From here Scottish langoustines are packed up and driven down to French restaurants. A place I would highly recommend was the Seafood Shack. This small street food spot is the work of an enterprising husband and wife duo. The food changes daily as whatever the husband catches is cooked up and served by his wife. The queue was a testament to both of their work. On the day we were there they had tempura battered haddock and crab claws. Aside from a couple of trips to this delicious spot we used our time here to recuperate. We knew we had one more section to come and we just needed to stay in one place for a few nights and sleep with a pillow which wasn’t a balled up fleece. We got a haircut, we swaggered around and we spent a whole day lying on the beachreading. It was quite a small beach and the tide was fairly low so we didn’t brave a swim but just enjoyed our day of doing very little.

By the next stage of our adventure we were at the small clump of buildings that make up Inchnadamph. We had a couple of sausage rolls in our pocket and the sun was shining so life was looking pretty good. Poking out of the grassy banks are common marsh orchids and what I believe are early purple orchids. The odd bluebell still pokes through. It is truly beautiful. As we climbed higher we found ourselves in a landscape that we shared with no other souls. The views on this clear day were breathtaking. The small plateaux were dominated by miniature lochs and the faint tracks of others that have walked this direction. We are reaching the most isolated sections of the Cape Wrath Trail, areas which I had been concerned about since the very beginning but luck was on our side. The rain finally stopped about five days before and since then there had been glorious sunshine which had dried out the route enormously. Where further south we had spent hours tramping through just a few miles of bog we could now skip across the terrain. Schadenfreude kicked in when we saw evidence of another hiker’s slip.

As we reached the top of a big pass we had an incredible view in all directions, with sea lochs and mountains competing for our attention. What is so amazing about much of our walk was how often we could just pick our own path and make our way across glens and up passes. Sometimes, the paths were clear and other times it really felt as though it was just us walking these hills. The descent from this pass was a case of the latter. We zigzagged down and eventually found a track which led roughly the direction we were expecting it to. Small ponds stained black by the peat around them dot the landscape. I imagined them as being 100m deep and filled with prehistoric creatures. I was a little bit scared.

When the sun shines in Scotland there is no place more beautiful. You have enormous landscapes to yourself with just the sound of the wind whipping through the heather. Our day got even better as we dropped into the glen which houses the UK’s largest waterfall, Eas A’ Chual Aluinn, in English this translates to ‘waterfall of the beautiful tresses’. A fitting name for this stunning sight. This lyrical Gaelic name speaks of the region’s heritage. The best thing about it was that nobody was there. We had this natural wonder to ourselves and we chose to camp with a view of it to our left and the sea loch, which it feeds, straight in front of us. The sun was warm enough for us to want to swim in one of the pools formed by a burn. Everywhere around us there were orchids and the last of the spring flowers. It is the 3rd of June but this far north it is still the season for bluebells. When we left Suffolk on the 26th of April they were just starting to blanket the woodland floor and a month and a half later they still accompanied us.

We woke the next morning and strolled down the glen admiring the views around us. We tiptoed across streams that just a week ago would have been in spate and in our boots. Now, we were lucky enough to keep our feet dry. Our buoyant mood was only lifted further when we spotted a load of mussels attached to rocks that are below the high water line. We clambered out and chose five each for our lunch. They were so plentiful we feel our modest pickings shouldn’t impact this ecosystem too heavily.

We walked around the banks of Loch Glendhu until we reached a nice spot where we found a big rock that fitted our backs nicely. The mussels went into the pot with some water, garlic and butter and they opened up perfectly. They were a wonderful orange colour and matched the richness of the waters around us. In fact they were matched in density of colour only by the banks of gorse that line this loch. They are so delicious and their pure protein is exactly what we need. It is very hard not to feel a little bit smug as we sit with our legs outstretched and our bellies full.

The ecosystem clearly saw that we have got a little bit big headed and cut us down to size that evening. After finding a lovely spot to camp by a smaller loch we were descended on by swarms of midges. A dash to the tent and we are okay but neither of us had been for a pee. After losing the battle of the mind we succumbed to our bladders and had to dart outside. The cumulative effect of this was hundreds of the little bastards sneaking into our tent. Slowly we squashed them one by one and then drifted into a sound sleep. Put firmly back into our place by the merciless outdoors.

We had one final day surrounded by Scottish hills before the land plateaus out in the North West tip. Aside from some unwelcome ticks that decided to latch onto us, uninvited, it was a wonderful day. We were surrounded by pink quartz hills and we had miles of space around us and nobody in sight. We stopped for our “athlete’s lunch” which usually consisted of half a packet of beef jerky, an energy bar and a cigarette. Considering we had walked about 450 miles by this stage it shows how you can do anything whilst you are young.

The penultimate campsite of our trip was another lovely spot. The sun reflecting off a loch and a bank of bluebells behind us. We had migrated north with the cuckoo and the swallow and both are present for our farewell. Tomorrow we will walk the last section of the journey. Our destination is not Cape Wrath lighthouse, unfortunately, as the military have a firing range between Sandwood Bay and the Cape. As we didn’t much fancy our chances against a bomb we chose to finish at the stunning Sandwood beach.

Our final walk takes us through Kinlochbervie. We had a snacky lunch and picked up supplies for our final nights. We lugged all these snacks, beers and bacon the final few miles. It seemed like the longest leg of the whole journey but when we arrived it was stunning. The stack on the far left of the bay is striking and the rolling sand dunes provided a perfect shelter to pitch our tent. We swaggered down to the sea, dipped a toe in and realised it was way too cold for us.

When we first thought about doing this trip I was just interested to see if I would be able to do something like this. It was impossible not to wonder if it was a good idea and if we would stand up to the test. It seemed like a bit of a crazy thing for two total novices to do. Equally, we were bored. We had two years of our early twenties in lockdown with any chance of adventure totally removed. Also, after working in a cheese packaging warehouse I probably had a little bit of midriff that needed to go. I will always love Scotland after this. Funny people and beautiful scenery. I only hope that over my lifetime I will see this landscape recover from centuries of mismanagement. Realising that your craziest ideas are totally possible and, in fact, are really fun has given me confidence to plan other trips. Since then I have cycled to Sicily and embarked on other trips around Europe. I think I have the adventure bug!