TGO Challenge 2012: Day 6 - The plan unravels

The day didn't start well. A car drove past the tents at around 5 in the morning and the driver decided to give us a wake up call with the horn.  (Tit!).  And then another (or maybe the same one coming back) did it again an hour later (oh how we larfed at these japes).

But the weather wasn't bad : a bit cool, a bit of a breeze, a bit of moisture in the air and the tent not too wet.  Having been blown off course by Jean's invitation to join her on The Trail of the 7 Lochs (I am so easily led at times), the obvious line to a crossing point on the R Findhorn, and thence to Aviemore was to continue a few more miles with her by a new track above Loch Ceo Glais and then by road round the southern end of Loch Duntelchaig and along the north side of Loch Ruthven.  After that, Jean was heading north to Culloden and I had 13 miles of road walking to reach the Findhorn at Dalmigavie Lodge.

Trail of the 7 Lochs near Loch Ceo Glais

This section of the T7L which runs above Loch Ceo Glais is, what shall we say... 'undeveloped'.  It starts off as heather bashing and continues over what appears to be some heather bashed cynically into a poor excuse for a path. 

Cynically bashed heather on the T7L

 Having said that, it does have some nice views.

Loch Ceo Glais and Loch Duntelchaig from TL7

After a couple of km of this, the T7L crossed the stream linking the two lochs.  There was no bridge.  We pondered what the Sunday afternoon strollers would make of this.

The stream - no bridge

and once across, our efforts were rewarded by this sign...

So we'd thrashed through heather and got wet feet to be told we couldn't go any further.  Grrr. We still had two thirds of Scotland to walk across and someone had put up a bloody sign telling us we couldn't go any further!!!  We made a beeline up the hill to the road, climbed over a barbed wire fence and got back to the main event, having taken about 1.5 hrs to traverse 2km. Jean had a very nicely produced A4 leaflet about the trail but sadly the product (or at least our expectations of it, as informed by the brochure) did not live up to the marketing*.

Looking back on the T7L

Putting that debacle behind us (or at least to our right hand side), we romped (hah) along the B862 and headed east (about bloody time) along the north edge of Loch Ruthven to where Jean turned towards Culloden to re-enact the sword through the heart of the Jacobite uprising at a quarter to six (ok, 1745). 

Meanwhile, the pain in my left big toe was competing with the pain in my right knee and it started to rain (a lot) and I was feeling miserable.  I carried on manfully (!) for another 5 miles, at which point I started to clutch at straws and wasted half an hour trying to cut off a corner to save half a mile.  It was futile.

Loch Ruthven

Then I unpacked the first aid kit and gave my big toe nail some further attention but it was a lost cause really.  Another couple of increasingly slow miles and I sat on a rock by the roadside, ate some chocolate, looked at the map and considered my options.  I was 25 miles from Aviemore, it was already 2pm and I was limping along at about 1mph.  I didn't know what damage I might be doing to my knee.  If I carried on this route I was pretty much committed to getting to Aviemore.  If I got that far I would be at least half a day behind schedule and would  have lost my planned rest day.  If things carried on getting worse, I could be stuck in the back of beyond, away from any roads or in a forest. Sometimes you just have to recognise when a plan is beyond salvaging.

I turned towards Inverness and walked back along the road.  After about 10 minutes, I heard a car and stuck my thumb out.  The driver stopped.  He was an ornitholoigist surveying birds nesting sites up on one of the wind farms.  He gave me a lift to Inverness where we stopped in Tescos and while he did some shopping, I had a mug of tea and a plate of chips.  Then he drove me to the centre of Aviemore and I checked into the Cairngorm Hotel because it was closest.  I looked a mess but the girl on reception found me a room and in no time at all, I was lying on a comfy bed in a warm room and feeling very pissed off.  I called John Manning to give him the news.  It was little comfort to learn that there had already been a higher than usual number of folk dropping out.
The next morning I got the first train home.  I didn't feel like hanging around to meet other Challengers coming off the Burma road.  There was snow on cars and the hills were white.  It would have been a cold night up where I'd planned to camp and I would have given anything to have spent it there rather than in the hotel.

I'd walked 66 miles from Strathcarron.  Before I set off, unsure how the shin pains would go, I'd said that if I made it to Drum I would be happy.  So on one level it was a success.  And I'd met and walked with some great people on the way.  But it's just wasn't enough - I didn't get to Johnshaven.  Oh well, next year.


 * I've been onto the website since and there are some caveats about  long heather and sections closed for lambing/calving.  This is sort of fair enough but it would be more useful if this information was in the trail brochure.  Also I get the impression that it's a trail that's been set up by horse riders primarilly for riding along on a horse.

TGO Challenge 2012: Day 5 - Drumnadrochit to Loch Ceo Glais

...to where?  You might well ask.  Today was the day when things began to fall apart.

Over breakfast I shared my knee anxieties with PeterfromHolland and he suggested that instead of ploughing through the middle of those hills that shall not be named I detour round to the north, which would avoid a lot of bogs and height.  Brilliant!  I'd been fixated on either sticking to the original plan or throwing in the towel.  There was a third alternative (although I distinctly remember  my Latin master saying you could only have two of those things).  I needed to catch Gordon's 9.30 ferry but I also needed to get to the chemist to stock up on ibuprofen and a knee support thingy.  By the time I arrived at Temple Pier there was no boat to be seen.  I did waste 5 minutes at the other pier asking some Germans if there had been viele mensche mit grosser rucksacken bei hier heute morgan, a question which was met with some blank looks.  They probably didn't understand me because under pressure and an interval of 40+ years since I did the O level,  I'd forgotten that the proper sentance construction is time before place.

I rang Gordon and ascertained that the next ferry would be at 4pm or 3.30, if I could find Harry from Newcastle (who I'd met on the train up) and Jean Turner (who I knew only by name) to pass on the message.  This meant I had half a day to kill.  Back to Drum to sit in a tea shop.  It wasn't a great tea shop and I wasn't feeling great.  Everyone who was in town the previous day, we now across Loch Ness and heading east and I was stuck here with a swollen knee and losing time.  I spent a couple of hours designing a new route on the GPS, which isn't easy if you want to cover more than 2km x 3km on a MemoryMap 2800 screen.  It was going to add a bit of distance but I could still be in Aviemore on the day I'd originally planned - just rather later.  I phoned the route into John Manning and went to explore Drum some more.  I bumped into Harry and then I bumped into Jean and we all met up in Fiddlers cafe, which is much to be preferred to the other place by the green.  More coffee and comfort food and eventually the time came to walk back to Temple Pier.  Not a boat or a Gordon was to be seen.  Harry called him on the phone and he said he was on his way.  Phew.

Jean, Harry and me (looking slighly demented)

The boat ride was fun and Gordon was a goldmine of local knowledge.  Inverfarigaig can't really be said to have a pier.  Getting ashore is really quite sporting.

Gordon's boat leaving Inverfarigaig Pier

We walked up the hill with Harry and then Jean and I headed north along the road which roughly follows the line of the R Farigaig.  This was already a deviation from the route I'd phoned into TGO Control - oops.

We were following the Trail of the Seven Lochs, which Jean had picked up a leaflet for in her researches for what became her award TGO Challenge winning route.  It is a new trail, which seems to have been devised by someone sitting in an office in Inverness who'd probably never set foot on a hill in his or her life but I'm getting ahead of myself- we didn't find that out until the following day.  At this point all was splendid, walking in the warm, late afternoon sun, watching the curlew and chewing the fat about all sorts of stuff without making any attempt to set the world to right (Leave that to those that feel the urge, I say.  The world has a habit of doing what it wants over a long enough time span anyway).

We walked till about 7pm and found a half decent place to pitch a couple of tents, with a stream for fresh water, just at the southern end of Loch Ceo Glais .

Camp by the side of the B872

Jean lent me her Sony wind up, long wave radio and I caught an episode of The Archers (things weren't good with Ruth and David).  We were camped under a hill with a mast on it and I was able to exchange a few texts with the kids and friends.  The knee was bearable but I had a bit of a problem with a big toe nail, which had started to lift a little and was looking a bit of a menacing shade of blue/black.

Rainbow over Loch Ceo Glais

We'd walked about 5 miles from Inverfarigaig but with the new route, I was now probably 10 miles further from Jonshaven than I'd been at the start of the day. 

TGO Challenge 2012 - Day 4: Bearnock to Drumnadrochit

I slept the sleep of a tired person in the steaming and slightly fettid atmosphere of a room with the central heating on full.  When I walked into the dining room at about 8 the next morning, I found Peter from Holland deep into a heavy counselling session with two Italians.  It seemed there had been some sort of falling out between them and their Scottish partner the previous night in the pub in Cannich. 

I only had 7 miles to walk on this day, with the promise of another comfy bed in a hotel, so it was a leisurely start and by the time I set off it had stopped raining.  I stupidly asked some workmen at the roadside for directions into the forest, instead of believing the map, and ended up doing another 2 miles along the road but if I had gone the other way I would probably have missed the sign on a gate which read, 'Highland Cattle - Cows with Horns'.  It made me think of this...

 It started to rain again as I picked up the forest track but it was a brief shower and the sun came out and all was well with the world.  That is all was well apart from the nagging pain in my right knee. Loch Ness came into view. Woohoo.

Loch Ness from the forest above Drumnadrochit

As I descended down through the woods looking for the shortcut past the fort I'd been told about, I realised I was being followed by a couple I recognised as fellow bloggers.  It was Mick and Gayle - going for a walk.  So we continued together to locate the illusive path and with my GPS loaded with OS maps and Gayle's superior tracking skills we managed to find a barbed wirte fence to climb over onto a very muddy track heading in the general direction of Drum.  It wasn't actually the right track, as we realised when we got to the bottom and saw a far less muddy one running parallel to it.

I parted company with M&G as they turned in the direction of the Co-op and I headed into 'town' to the hotel, my right knee now hurting quite a bit more from the descent.  I didn't make it to the hotel in one go.  I bumped into PeterFromHolland who despite leaving Bearnock after me had arrived first.  He had just booked himself into the same hotel, having blagged some cheap deal on a room because their bunkhouse had closed three years earleir (or something like that).  Next, I spotted the three Scotsman sitting in a pub and since it was lunchtime and I was in no rush, it seemed unfriendly not to go and join them.  And it was a good call as the barman was handing out free whisky to Challengers so it seemed uncharitable not to stay and sample the steak and ale pie they served (purely by way of a market analysis).  I can report that it was a fine pie but perhaps not quite as good as the one in Cannich.

The rest of the day was spent lying on the bed in the hotel, popping ibuprofen and blathering my knee in biofreeze gel to reduce the swelling.  This didn't seem like a good state to be in before heading off onto the next section of the walk (into the mountains that shall not be named) and 118 miles still to be walked.

TGO Challenge 2012 - Day 3: Glen Cannich to Bearnock

Apologies for long intermission.  I've been back to Scotland in the meantime.  So, where was I? 

Oh yes, I'd just been woken up by something cold and hard in my ear and the sound of a Whooper Swan.  How did a swan get in the tent and why was it sticking its beak in my ear?  OK, so it was the toggle on my sleeping bag.

Having now abandoned the delicious and largely nutrition free meal of soup and noodles to start the day, getting up and going was a somewhat quicker affair.  The outside world was rather grey and drizzley and the first thing I needed to do was get across the River Cannich.  I was under the impression that the 1:50k showed a bridge just upstream from where I was camped.  Actually looking at it now on the computer screen, blown up to something that an old bloke with increasingly crap eyesight can focus on, it is bloody obvious that it's a ford and not a bridge. 

River Cannich - to be crossed

So the day got off to a start with an unplanned paddle.  Then I  had to do battle with another gate fastener but after that the track though the forest was nothing short of really quite pleasant.  There were views of mist clung hills and birds of many varieties flitting around and about.  I crossed back over the river by a road bridge and took a track which should have avoided 2 km of road walking but after 1km I reached a gate supporting a fairly uncompromising, 'keep out' message.  Some rude words were uttered.  Then I spotted what looked like a fairly wide and braided bit of river just beyond and decided another paddle was the better part of discretion.  So back on the road and a brief photo stop above the falls of Eas an Fhithich and I was walking into Cannich before midday, half a day ahead of schedule. 

Eas An Fhithach

I wandered up and down the main street, checking out the facilities, which took about three minutes and went into a throughly run down looking cafe/bar/hotelly sort of place and had a thoroughly splendid steak and ale pie and a cup of hot coffee.  Peter from Holland came in as I was doing my Desperate Dan impersonation and we held a broken conversation between mouthfuls of cow and chips.  Peter mentioned that he was booked into a bunkhouse at Bearknock that night - or was it a bear house at bunk knock - I was only half listening. 

After settling the bill I set out into the rain and went in a generally westerly direction to turn onto the track into Kerrow Wood.  This turned out to look like a stage set for a re-enactment of the Battle of the Somme, made all the more convincing by the sheeting rain predicted by Mr Gloom and Doom 24 hours earlier (damn the man).  What I had expected to be a pleasant forest trail was in fact a new access road, bordered by large drainage ditches and fences, for use by both logging and pylon construction traffic.

Logging Road in Kerrow Wood

What a pleasant scene!

Cut down trees, put up a pylon

I completely missed the track to Loch Rhiabhachain and as I sat on a log scoffing some comfort food and pondering the map, a red squirrel ran past my feet.  The last time I'd seen one of these I was about three years old.  I was so excited I tweeted.  And then a bloke in a huge logging wagon stopped to ask if I was ok, which was nice of him, the more so because I'd half expected he was going to tell me I shouldn't be there.  Anyway, it was too far to go back to the junction, even assuming I could find it amongst the ditches and bomb holes, so I carried on down the logging road to the Cannich - Drum road.  I'd succeeded in covering just over two road miles in just under four and half.  If I carried on like this, it was going to take consideranly longer than planned to reach the coast.  My earlier euphoria was starting to ebb.

I plodded along the grass verge for a couple of miles, getting sprayed by every passing vehicle and musing on how much wetter, very wet feet could get.  I came across some road kill in the form of a small deer, which led me to consider if was possible to prepare venison stew with a very small swiss army penknife and a pocket rocket.  Well how hard could it be, for goodness sake?  And then Peter from Holland popped out of a side road muttering stuff about chambered cairns and bear pits in bunkers, so I followed him and ended up at a knocking shop with Bear Grylls.  One of us must have been hallucinating.  It had been a funny old day but I had a room to myself, large enough to accommodate a wet tent and wet clothes and a radiator to dry wet boots (oh there's nothing quite like the smell of incipient mildew) and a shower.  And that was when I discovered that instead of packing a small bottle of liquid soap from Rose at Backpackinglight, I had in fact packed a small bottle of Avon Skin So Soft cut with lavendar oil, which someone told me was just the thing for midgies when we did Knoydart two years ago.  As indeed it was - they'd loved it.

And that left just 125 miles to go.

TGO Challenge 2012 - Day 2

OK class.  Settle down at the back.  This is the next bit...

Day 2: Allt Rhiathingaidh to a half way down Glen Cannich

The day dawned and outside the tent the sun was shining on snowy peaks.  Was I still in Scotland or had I been transported to the Alps?  I no longer felt hungover and my legs didn't hurt.  I made some soup and noodles and immediately knew that I wasn't going to be able to do this trip with these for breakfast every day.  I later buried most of the noodles and tucked into a healtho-cruncho bar intended for mid-morning.  Carl had survived the night in his not quite a complete tent and sawn off sleeping bag.

Carl faffing with his pack at the start of day two

As we finished packing up, Alistair and his dad, Edward, came into view and we set off together for the bealach that would lead us to a track down into Glen Strathfarrar.  It was a bit of a slog through heather and haggs but not entirely unpleasant on such a sunny morning; the time passed quickly and the track was where it should have been.  This felt good.  Getting ahead of myself, I thought that I just might even get to the east coast.

Glen Strathfarrer (and Carl again)

Either Carl had slowed down today or I had speeded up but we kept pace down the glen, spotting the local flora and fauna, discussing the UK government's energy policy and generally setting the world to rights (well for goodness sake, someone needs to.)  We met a solo walker on his way up the glen and he seemed most put out that there was anyone else in his hills (he was English).  He warned us with some enthusiam that a storm was on the way and advised us to pitch our tents in the lee of a drumlin for protection.  Carl and I later discussed the physics of this and I posited that the drumlin would act like an aircraft wing and the air pressure behind it would be reduced and the tent would be in a partial vacuum and some bad shit would happen, though I couldn;t quite work out what sort of bad shit without the aid of the back of an envelope, which neither of us had to hand.  But I digress. Carl told him, somewhat naughtily, that there were 300 people heading to the east coast and he might come across them and with that he got quite agitated about bothies being full and the tranquillity of the mountains being destroyed.  We wished him a good day and carried on down the track, chuckling to ourselves.

Somewhere in Glen Strathfarrer - it's just a nice pic, innit

We had a brief elevenses stop by some hydro-concrete stuff and as we continued down the track I mentioned to Carl that one of my vetters had said that the bridge at Inchvuilt was unsafe and closed and we needed to make a decision before then on going round by the dam across the end of Loch Monar or taking the ford.  The water levels weren't high, so we thought we'd go for the ford.  As it was, we walked right past the track down to it and ended up at the bridge where we found Ed and Alistair having lunch.  Even from 100 yds away the bridge did indeed look unsafe and we went a short way back upstream and crossed at a point where the river was a bit more braided.  Well I did.  Carl decided to try a deeper spot but then his knees are further off the ground than mine.

And so it was, after another couple of miles, that we reached the point where I said goodby to Carl and turned off south to cross over to Glen Cannich, following the Allt Innis na Larach.  This was a route which this year's vetter, Colin Crawford, said didn't exist as a track but which last year. Ann and Alvar Thorn seemed confident did and was mentioned in Scottish Hill Tracks (which it is, in my 1977 edition).  From a distance there appeared to be a vague track going up the left (east) of the stream or it might have been merely the product of a desire for there to be such a track.  On the right side there was a bloomin great LRT. 

Looking up the Allt Innis na Larach - Blooming great LRT on right and the 'path of dreams' on the left

But before all that there was the River Farrar to cross (for the third time) and a bridge to locate.  It was then that I noticed Carl waving at me from the road.  That's nice I thought but we've already said our goodbyes.  Oh, he's pointing at something.  Oh it's the bridge...

And what a fine bridge it was, if somewhat wobbly.  I was glad that I wasn't still hungover.

Well, this was exciting.  I was on my own again and about to cross into another valley by a route that might not exist and I might die or be lost for days.  By the time I reached the point where the LRT started climbing I could see the other track.  Not much evidence of human use but plenty of deer had passed this way.  And it turned out to be absolutely splendid, rising up next to a small mountain stream with plunge pools and cleaned washed boulders higher up.  It had a distinctly alpine feel (in miniature).  About half way up, there was an especially inviting pool and I took the opportunity to jump (well inch my way slowly 'cos I'm a wuss) into the icy cold water and get clean.  In the time it took me to find my towel, a colony of ticks had taken up residence on the tastiest parts of my body and I was still plucking them out when I got back home a few days later.  Ooops.  What's that disease with the funny name called?

Looking back down into Glen Strathfarrar

Further upstream, the path had washed out in three places, the first being easy enough to traverse but the next requiring a bit of a detour up and over.  For the third, I ended up clinging to chunks of heather and as I topped out, I came across two foxes in the meadow.  One of them saw me and run off up the hill but I was downwind of them and the other hung around for a couple of minutes until, with feet slipping and about to lose grip of the heather, I was obliged to haul myself up over the edge, which scared it off.  Sorry, there are no pics - no free hands to hold the camera.

The bealach dragged on a bit.  Why do they always do that?  And the path became a bit indistinct, well ok, disappeared completely but eventually I got a view down into Glen Cannich and the road seemed close enough to reach out to, although it took another hour and some more to get there.

View into Glen Cannich - see how close the valley floor looks!

Now Ann and Alvar had said to keep left of the plantation on the way down and it would have been a good idea if I'd heeded that advice but of course when you pick up a bit of a track, however faint, it's just tempting to follow it.  And then I was following a deer fence which was heading into a ravine.  Eeek!  Anyroad up, I found a sort of stile thing over the fence and then I realised I was inside it and thrashing and stumbling down steep foresty bits and getting wet feet and a bit hot and cross with myself.  Eventually I could see the road and, mercifully, a gate out through the fence.  Looking back from the gate I could see that there is a path down, to the east of my descent route.  Ahh, that Ann and Alvar, they know a thing or two, they do.

So anyway, just across the road was a splendid patch of grass by the river, with a small rise at one end to use as a makeshift aircraft wing against the storm.  The wind never came down Glen Cannich, though I believe others had it bad elsewhere, and I had a splendidly peaceful night until three whooper swans came gliding down the river and woke me around 7 the next morning.  Whooper di dooper.

Camp in Glen Cannich at bottom of Allt Innis na Larach

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed walking with Carl (I have to say that because he says nice things about me).  No seriously, he is a splendid walking companion and I look forward to the opportunity of other adventures with him sometime.  The same cannot be said about 'Mr doom and gloom, get out of my mountains, you're all going to perish in the storm, Englishman'.

All that came to about 14 miles, so that just left another 140 miles to Johnshaven.

Oh yes, for tea I had pudding of Mountain House Red Berries and Custard, which is possibly the yummiest thing I ever have eaten in a tent, though at the current price of  £4.40 may just have been a one night only experience.

TGO Challenge 2012 - Not Even Close

Well I've been back home more than two weeks and still haven't written this up, so here goes (deep breath)...

Having pulled out of the 2011 Challenge at the last minute because of shin problems, it was a relief to get on the train for Edinburgh.  At Newcastle I'd picked up another Challenger, Harry James, and by Inverness, there was a half a train full of them.

Day 1: Strathcarron to Pait Lodge

I left the hotel on the bong of 9am and walked with Mike Knipe for the first half mile until he turned off north. Far be it from me to tell him Montrose was to the east.

So this was it. It was raining but the weather was coming from behind, the track ahead looked long, I was mildly hungover, on my own and there was nothing to distract me from noticing every twinge in my legs. Was I really up to this? I'd planned this route 2 years ago, it had been vetted twice, but did I actually want to walk across Scotland any more? I could see a few other Challengers ahead of me and the gap increasing. I could walk Scottish hill tracks without having to commit to two weeks of day on day backpacking. Oh nagging self doubt be gone!

Wilderness out of Strathcarron

Carl and an unknown rucksack in the bothy at Bedroig Lodge

I stopped at Bendroig Lodge for lunch and reached the east end of Loch Calavie and my proposed camp about 2pm. It seemed a bit early to stop and it didn't look very inviting place to put up a tent, let alone lie in it for 15-16 hrs. So it was on to Pait Lodge.

A few people had told me it was quite hard going as the path on the map doesn't exist (and they were right - it was and it doesn't). Anyway, it had to be done sooner or later. I caught up with the 3 Scots (whose names I've forgotten but could find out if I looked) when the track ran out and we floundered around in the morass with occasional glimpses of Carl Mynot a mile or so in front. I was wishing I could teleport to where he was, though when I got to where he was, I was wishing I could teleport to anywhere else but there. The trees around Pait Lodge seemed within reach but having lost height I'd got myself in a whole mess of bog and peat haggs and brown sticky porridgy stuff and was about to burst into tears like a big girl, then decided that would just make the ground wetter. So instead I crawled on hands and knees out of a big hole I'd dropped into, reached the bridge and then spent 5 minutes trying to open the gate into the grounds of Pait Lodge. Mike had said something the night before about how to do this but I hadn't listened attentively enough.

Rainbow over Pait Lodge

And then a bit more crashing and splashing and splodging and cursing and I came across Carl lying spread-eagled on a rock, looking for all the world as if he had been spread out for any passing eagle. And I said, there s'posed to be a place just up here to camp and he said let's go and off he went, like someone trying to escape from a predatory eagle. And we found a handy, dandy place to camp by a weee burrrrnn and I collapsed in my tent and it was an hour before I had enough energy to do the blowy up thing with the NeoAir and strike a match over the pocket rocket.

Camp by Allt Riabhachain above Pait Lodge

And then Carl spotted a brace of Golden Eagle circling above the snow clad hills - or they may actually have been Osprey, cos there a few of those round there. Anyway, it was dead impressive and gave us a wild and remote feeling and there was only another 154 miles to walk. And then I slept for a long time

More to follow (eventually)...