West Highland Way Diaries: June 22-23, 2017

Lots of mud, my contribution to Scottish independence, and a little bit of shit

June 22, 2017, Tyndrum, Scotland

I hate camping. That was my first conscious thought at 4 o’clock this morning when I woke up and realised I was laid in a puddle.

My tent had leaked for the second time.

“Fuck this,” I said, and again made for the dry room. I cleaned myself up in the shower block, got eaten alive by midges who descended upon me while I did so, dried the inside of my tent, and settled down for two more hours of interrupted sleep. When morning properly arrived I tried to dry my things, but everything had that damp, musty smell of a towel that has been used too many times. By the time we set off I was still uncomfortably moist.

Mercifully, today was the easiest since the first day to Drymen, and after a quick rain shower, the weather turned sunny and warm. We have left Loch Lomond well behind and have begun our climb into the highlands. Our destination today was Tyndrum, just 12 miles down the trail.

My guidebook promised a relatively gentle day’s hiking, so of course, I had to make it more difficult for myself. At mid-morning we hit a patch of trail that had turned into a deep and muddy mess. We quickly realised there was no way around it, and with some trepidation set about going through it. Rik, being over six feet of Dutchman, went first, and tiptoed his way through. I should have followed his route. Why would I not follow his route? He’s much taller than me and I should have realised that if the mud where he had walked had not swallowed him up, it would not swallow me, but I was overconfident, and I went off-piste.

My left leg sunk into the mud ankle-deep, my right leg swiftly followed, but deeper, with more finality.

“Are you ok, Tom?” Rik asked from the other side.

“I’m fine,” I whined, my pride hurt more than my body.

“Are you going to get out?” Seb asked from the opposite site.

“I can’t,” I admitted after a pause, during which I tried to move my right leg and nearly lost my boot.

And so, Rik had to come back into the mud, and Seb had to join him from the other side, and they had to heave me to safety.

“Well, shall we carry on?” I asked, brightly.

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We lunched at Crianlarich, where I was laughed at by all who saw me. We encountered the couple who we saw in the bar last night. The woman wasn’t crying anymore, though they didn’t look like they were having any more fun than yesterday. We made it to Tyndrum without further mishap.

I have decided that if I can help it, I won’t be spending any further nights in the tent. Either I’m hapless and can’t put it up right, or it has an actual structural issue that means should it rain it will almost certainly leak. Whichever of these is the problem, I know that should it rain again (and don’t forget, this is Scotland), I’ll get so wet that I’ll need to buy some armbands.

So, when we reached Tyndrum and the hostel and campsite, the first thing I did was ask for a bed. When the lady behind the counter saw that there were three of us, she said we could have something attractively named a “hikers’ hut.”

“A hikers’ hut!” Seb said with enthusiasm, “now that is something we should stay in.”

So, we’re in the hikers’ hut for the night. We have all taken turns to go and shower in the block, and then to come back into the hut and exclaim, “Jesus, it smells like shit in here.”

We’ve made sure we don’t smell too much like shit, and are now off to the pub to drink away the thought that we need to walk 20 miles tomorrow.

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June 23, 2017, Kingshouse, Scotland

We awoke knowing our plan was this: we would stock up on breakfast snacks at the shop around the corner, we would walk to Bridge of Orchy, six miles away, where we would have brunch, walk on another three miles past the Inveroran hotel, have a quick break, and then walk nine further miles onto Glencoe.

Rik and Seb have booked some beds at the Glencoe ski resort, I’ve booked a bed at the Kingshouse Hotel just down the hill from there.

The weather was terrible from the outset. We were drenched by the time we reached the shop around the corner, and my backpack rain-cover stubbornly refused to stay attached to my backpack, making it a less useful weight in my pack than the 1000-page paperback I’ve insisted on carrying to the finish.

While Rik and Seb were shopping, I spotted and was alarmed by a sign I saw on the shopfront. Messy handwriting on a piece of cardboard announced, ‘last shop before Kinlochleven’. This was alarming because Kinlochleven was 28 miles away. We won’t reach it until tomorrow evening. It’s also on the other side of the Devil’s Staircase, the Way’s highest point.

“Is this really the last shop on the Way before Kinlochleven?” I asked the shopkeeper as I bought some plasters and chocolate.

“Would the sign say it was the last shop on the Way before Kinlochleven if it wasn’t the last shop on the Way before Kinlochleven?” he replied.

“I suppose not,” I said, trudging back into the rain, wounded. If I were ever put in charge of maintaining Anglo-Scottish relations, the Scots would be independent within minutes.

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For the seven miles between the shop in Tyndrum and the hotel in Bridge of Orchy, the rain didn’t stop. My small breakfast scavenged from the last shop before Kinlochleven had not fulfilled me, and I was hungry, wet and cold.

But we made it to Bridge of Orchy, sat in the hotel and ate quite a few bacon sandwiches while we waited for the weather to brighten. Miraculously, (and remember that given the location, miraculous is the appropriate word), the rain stopped, the clouds dispersed, and the sun shone down with warmth. We took that as our cue to hit the trail and spent the rest of the day happily churning out the miles.

Walking the West Highland Way is difficult, what happened to Dean demonstrates that. But it is also a wonderful experience. When the sun is out and the ground is dry, you can spend many a happy hour positively bounding through scenery that looks better than you could possibly have imagined.

The beauty of the highlands really cannot be overstated, and as we walked over a rocky old road towards Glencoe, I realised that after today, I only have two days of walking left. I’m looking forward to the finish, the sense of accomplishment, the gorgeous feeling of rubbing said accomplishment in Dean’s face, but I will miss the Way when I’m not on it.

After leaving Rik and Seb at Glencoe I bumped into a couple of Germans who were walking the Way backwards (this isn’t hugely recommended). They asked what it was like, and although I did think all that I just said above, when I looked back at the 70 or so miles I’ve already covered, and tried to imagine walking it again, all I could muster in response was, “hard.” They looked pensive when I left them to go and eat my dinner.

The ‘hotel’ at the Kingshouse Hotel is closed for renovations, but what is open is a brand spanking new bunkhouse. It’s clean and well maintained and the piping hot water is incredibly welcome after a few days of disappointing lukewarm campsite showers. I bumped into Alex and Sarah, a friendly German couple we drank with in Tyndrum. We had a few drinks together and invited a Belgian named Oliver to the table too. He’s been walking the Way a little slower than the rest of us, but has been wild camping alone, staying in whatever field he fancies away from campsites or hotels, which sounds like my idea of a damp, squelchy hell.

It’s been an incredibly pleasant evening, and if it weren’t for what happened later tonight in the toilet I wouldn’t tell you much more about it. But something did happen in the toilet.

Getting ready for bed, I padded across to the bathroom on bare feet, and opened the cubicle door. Now, I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, the floor of a toilet cubicle should not, as a rule, have any shit on it. You can imagine my chagrin and displeasure then when I strode into the cubicle, pyjama bottoms already on the way down, and felt a soft but troubling squish beneath my right foot.

I stood still for a long moment, then dared to look down. I had stood in a piece of shit about the size of an almond, and it was now smeared on the floor and, more importantly, the bottom of my foot. I wiped it off and then made an attempt at cleaning the floor, though frankly my heart wasn’t in it.

I thought as I peed that I have taken for granted all the times in my life when I have walked into a toilet cubicle and been greeted with a floor free of shit. I also thought that, if a toilet cubicle floor is to have shit on it, you would think it more likely that it would be a whole shit, rather than an almond-sized castaway. A whole shit can be explained away, if by some admittedly troubling conclusions. The tiny piece of shit that sent me briefly skidding across the cubicle like a cartoon character on a banana skin must have a real story to tell as to how it got down there.

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Some housekeeping

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