A GREAT GLEN CHALLENGE
Where to start when there are a few beginnings?
It is all about the knee. I have Osteo-arthritis in my left knee and have done for some years. It seems to me that surgery and replacement carries risks and might really be the option of last resort. A friend suggested to my wife that perhaps the Knee Mentor might help. This was a Facebook thing. I don't do Facebook. My wife forced me to take a look. I did and I haven't looked back since. Although, I might be slightly addicted to doom scrolling now.
The Knee Mentor, Clare started me walking and exercising to improve my knee function. She provided a brace to improve my knee alignment. My knee began to improve in terms of pain and mobility. I graduated from the Knee Kickstarters to the Knee Optimizers. In so doing, I had to, among other things, set myself a challenge. It couldn't just be like walking to the pub on a Friday - albeit that is 5 or 6 miles there and back. I know, because I have done it once or twice. It had to be a real challenge.
I have always had a hankering to walk the Great Glen Way. I live at one end of the Way and spent the first 18 years of my life at the other end. I've driven between the two ever since I left Fort William.
It is just walking. It won't be a race. A lot of it is flattish beside the canal. You can do it.
That's the sort of thing I told myself. Anyway, after months of planning, sorting out logistics, buying guide books and maps, and following the Optimizer routines to prepare, it was time to actually do it.
Back to the original question - where to start now that I had started? Fort William is the accepted wisdom. You should have the prevailing wind behind you and the first three days are basically flat. When? June was the decision.
Why did I record this in my Highland Gourmet Trips? Well we ate a variety of meals, but one, in particular was outstanding, and it all took place in the Highlands. As good reasons as any.
OK, so, this is what happened.
DAY 1 Monday 2nd June 2025 Fort William to Gairlochy bottom lock.
Of course, it isn't just about starting. Who are you going with and how are you getting to the beginning of each leg and back from the end of each day?
The answer is I was going with my wife, Sharon. We were also walking each of the first three days with my brother, Bruce, who lives in Fort William. His wife, Irene was our driving support. She took the opening photo of us at the start of the Way at the site of the Old Fort. Fort William is An Gearasdan in Gaelic - The Fort. Everyone who lives in Fort William calls it The Fort, so it is absolutely the right place to start. So, we did.
How carefree and nonchalant we look. If only we had known.......
However, I can't walk away from a bit of archaeology at the best of times and today was no exception. Having said that, there is very little of the fort remaining. The first fort was built in 1654 to hold troops from Cromwell's New Model Army. That soon fell into disuse and a new stone fort was built about 50 years later. It started the chain of forts along the Great Glen fault line. These were Forts George, Augustus and William and they were designed to keep us rebellious Highlanders down.
The fort was occupied by the army until 1854 and was dismantled 10 years after that for housing and allotments and even further destroyed when the West Highland Railway Company bought it for associated engine sheds and the like. The last officer's quarters were demolished in 1948. I like to think that people like my Great Grandfather would have seen the Fort when there was still something more imposing to see.
As we set off, the clouds were pretty low and threatening. You couldn't really see Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain, but be assured, it is up there. Despite living there for a long time, I never went to the top. I did go fishing in the loch between the Meall an t-Suidhe and the Ben when I was young. No fish, but I did find a few silver Victorian florins. Who knows why they were there?
You can easily see the huge pipes carrying water downhill to the Aluminium Works at the bottom of the hill. The water is transported over vast networks of lochs and pipes to this point and they say that the purest aluminium in the country was made here. My father and my brother both worked there for a time. The factory is obscured by one of the tourist trains.
We passed by Old Inverlochy Castle, not to be confused with the very expensive Inverlochy Castle Hotel a few miles away. This castle, which is currently closed for visitors, dates from the 12th Century and is one of the few castles of its type to be largely unaltered since the before the Wars of Independence in the 1300's. Two battles took place here. In 1431, the clansmen of the Lord of the Isles defeated the much larger army of James I and in 1645, Argyll's Covenanters were slaughtered by Montrose's Royalist highlanders.
Talking of military matters, we had to cross the Soldier's Bridge, so called as it was built for the community by the Royal Engineers. It took us across the River Lochy and into the village of Caol. Caol derives from the Gaelic of the same spelling, meaning Kyle or Narrows. It is pronounced as cool. The village lies near the point where Loch Linnhe narrows into Loch Eil.
I haven't been to Caol in a very long time and I was surprised to see the flood protection works that provide an amazing walkway all along the river and then on to the sea front.
You could see the Ben a bit better now (and it is always called The Ben here).
From the sea front, you get great views to the west down Loch Linnhe. Up until the age of two, I lived on the right of the picture at a scattering of houses called Treslaig. Fort William is on the left, and we moved there in 1956!
Had we really only walked that far? It was a lot of walking for a fairly short straight line distance.
From Caol it is a short step to the Caledonian Canal and Neptune's Staircase. This is a flight of 8 canal locks that raise the canal 19 metres within a quarter of a mile. It was built by Thomas Telford between 1803 and 1822. It is quite a sight, so we sat down on a bench to take it all in.
You might think the railway bridge on front of the staircase mars the view somewhat. However, we had advance knowledge that the Harry Potter steam train was due to cross in about 10 minute's time. Worth a wee wait, we thought.
And, so it proved.
That was us at the top of the staircase.
We are well out of town now and the scenery is much more rural by the side of the canal.
Canal sluices near Tor Castle.
You cannot quite see the remains of the castle from the canal, but it was once owned by the Thane of Lochaber, Banquo, who features in Shakespeare's MacBeth. It eventually fell into the hands of Clan Cameron.
Time for a rest and refuel at the Loy Sluices, which deal with overflow from the canal.
You've got to keep your energy levels up!
More canal-side walking as we make our way to our proposed lunch stop at Moy farm and swing bridge.
There is even a picnic bench at the bridge and we shared it with a 74 year old walker, who was doing the route for the second time. He had also walked across France! We had an interesting chat and we would meet him a few times again later on.
The swing bridge is the last surviving original bridge over the canal. It only carries farm traffic and is still operated by hand. The lock keeper used to have to row across the canal to operate the bridge. It dates from 1820 and is thought to be the only cast iron swing bridge in the country. It might also be one of the oldest moveable bridges of any kind in the UK.
It isn't very much further to the bottom lock at Gairlochy, which is the end of this leg of the walk. One guide book says the walk is 10 miles, another says 10.5 miles. My OS app says we walked 11.6 miles. Having said that, we did go a bit further than the lock to pick up the car. This disagreement over distances was a constant theme. As the OS app is consistently the longest, I'll be going with that!
In any event, here we are at the end of a day's walking, which took us a little over 5 hours.
We took Bruce back to Spean Bridge for a cup of tea while waiting for his lift home.
Much needed.
Once Bruce was away, we checked into our B&B and had a wee nap. Nikki always says that sleep is a great aid to recovery!
Food helps as well and we managed the 5 minute walk to the old Railway Station for dinner.
Sharon was needing her gin. The local Bealach gin, made near Letterfinlay, just down the road, was adjudged to be so good, she bought a bottle online, which they kindly delivered to tomorrow's hotel for us to pick up!
I was very happy with my local IPA.
Sharon had a smoked trout and beetroot starter.
I had a venison and beef shin terrine.
Sharon's main was a spicy chicken pasta.
Whilst I had a Cajun chicken fillet and chips. A bit of carb loading going on there.
We were not late to bed!
DAY 2 Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Gairlochy to Laggan Locks.
Day 2 started off a bit on the wet side. Not really what we wanted, but we had no real choice. We met up at Laggan Locks to leave one of the cars and then drove back to Gairlochy to start walking in the rain.
We were a bit drookit before we even started!
We started off on the road and away from the canal, going towards Achnacarry, home of Cameron of Locheil, or clan chief. We didn't see him. I had met his father many years ago at a work thing. He pointed out to me that my surname, Cameron is an anagram of romance! Nothing too romantic about walking in the rain.
There were some nice views over Loch Lochy and you could watch the next band of rain sweeping up the loch to reach us.
We left the tarred road and passed through some nice woodland, leading us down to the loch.
Parts of the path are also used by cyclists and we did have a moment of confusion. Luckily we chose the correct path, as the wrong one would have taken us into this flooded route!
We found the path with the bridge!
Another shower heading our way.
There were views in between downpours!
The path takes you back on to the road which takes you to Clunes, which is basically a collection of a few forestry houses.
Not long before we got to Clunes, we met another walker. A young guy, he looked very tired. So he should have done, he had walked from Fort William that morning - about 15 miles. The day before he had walked up Ben Nevis and then he come down via the Carn Mor Arete, which is a bit scary, being pretty narrow in places (not that I actually know this from experience). He was there in thick mist on his hands and knees for a good part of that! He said he was heading for Fort Augustus, at least another 16 miles away! We don't know if he made it that far, but I hope so. His sleeping bag was soaked and was only getting wetter. We did pass him sleeping on a rock a few miles further on.
The sign at Clunes says Laggan was only 7 miles away. That turned out to be not quite the truth. The sign also warned us we were entering remote, sparsely populated and dangerous countryside. No choice now, though, so on we went.
The route takes you a bit away from the loch and we gained a bit of height which improved the views and occasionally exposed us a bit more to the elements.
Inevitably, we came back downhill, which was a bit of a pity.
It was a pity, because we soon came to an expected diversion. I was suffering a bit by then and had been dreading the zig zag diversion uphill. There was, however, no choice. The diversion was to allow works associated with the proposed new Coire Glas pumped storage hydro scheme. This will be the first large scale pumped storage scheme in Britain for 30 years. It will more than double the country's electricity storage capacity. It also added a good bit on to our walk! It added a climb of over 75 metres over a long zig zag route. The elevation was not so bad as I had feared, but the zig zags were very long to reduce gradient, so they became a bit relentless.
There were views to compensate, though.
They had thoughtfully provided little shelters and seats where the zigs became zags.
They even provide interpretive boards, where I could show off my Knee Mentor Beanie Hat..
We passed by the wild camping site, where one of the local bears reminded us of the need for proper care of the woods.
The last section turned out to be a slog on the tarmac in the lashing rain.
I think we had all had enough by the time we got to Laggan Locks. That feeling was compounded when we discovered that the Eagle Barge floating pub was not open on Tuesdays! You can tell it was shut by the dejected way Bruce was trudging back.
We managed a photo to confirm we had reached the end of another leg, by which time the rain had happily stopped.
Luckily, our hotel for the night was open, so we repaired to the bar for a cold beer and another Bealach gin. When the lady from Letterfinlay dropped off the gin, the owner of the Corriegour Hotel was so impressed, she bought 4 bottles for the bar! No finder's fee for us, though.
After a cold drink, some ice on the knee and a hot bath, Sharon and I managed to go downstairs for our dinner. We had a very nice table by the window looking down Loch Lochy to where we had walked earlier in the day.
Dinner was magnificent - the highlight of the whole the day, to be honest.
We started with some delicious homemade bread, butter and wild garlic pesto.
Sharon had a delightful ravioli of asparagus with edamame beans, pine nuts and parmesan cream.
My rare breed pork belly, ballotine of leg, raisin ragu and wild mushrooms was similarly very good, indeed.
I am not a cream lover, but I certainly enjoyed the vanilla bean Crème Brule with passion fruit.
We finished with a selection of Highland cheeses.
We were certainly needing something to lift our spirits after such a long and, at times, very wet day. The OS app says we walked 14 miles today, and it certainly felt like it.
Another early night was in store.
DAY 3 Wednesday 4th June 2025 Laggan Locks to Fort Augustus.
This was to be our last day with Bruce and, once again, we were greeted with rain first thing. There was also a dusting of snow on the hills on the other side of the Loch!
This was the view from the breakfast table.
We met Bruce at Laggan Locks after a fine breakfast. The plan was for Irene to pick us up in Fort Augustus later and we would come back for our car. That allowed us to make an earlier start to the day.
Once Irene left us we needed a photo to mark the start of another leg. As luck would have it Bruce's late ex wife's brother was about to sail from here to Oban, so he took the photo! It really is a very small world, at least it is up here!
We started off along the canal once again, where we saw these rowers going through their paces, whilst their trainer shouted instructions via megaphone from a wee motor boat.
The canal has an altogether more rural look about it here.
The station is now the subject of a restoration project.
The railway route gives pretty flat and easy walking.
There is plenty of interest, including this length of tunnel, which runs through rock.
Clearly the bats like it!
Further on from the tunnel are a couple of iron struts across the route of the line. The steepness of the slope above would suggest that these might have been part of some kind of avalanche shelter, but I have not been able to verify that.
We stopped for a rest and a refuel at Leitirfearn, which means the Alder hillside in Gaelic. There is an old abandoned cottage here and the site is one of a number of identified wild camping spots along the route.
The composting toilet has either been blown or pushed over! I do hope it wasn't in use when that happened!
The solar powered lights were still working.
The cottage follows the line of General Wade's military road from the 1720's. This illustrates how important the Great Glen geological fault has been for communications in this part of the Highlands. There are old drove roads, the Caledonian Canal, General Wade's road, the A82 Trunk road, a cycle route and the Great Glen Way all following the easy path through otherwise difficult terrain.
The picture is of the line of the military road, built to connect the forts and to keep rebellious Highlanders in their place by allowing easy movement of government troops. Of course, the same roads allowed the Jacobites to move rapidly through here in the 1745 Rebellion.
We were soon in sight of the end of the loch, glimpsed through the increasing showers running up and down the same geological fault with some ease.
Just got to walk round the head of the loch, cross the road, have lunch and then along the canal into Fort Augustus. Easy!
Yes, we have walked up the length of the loch that you can see in the background.
After lunch on a perilously rickety, cold and windy bench, we were off down the north bank of the canal. In the rain!
After a long trudge, we reach Kytra lock.
It was getting a bit warm and we needed a wee break. So here I am sitting on the dock of the bay, sort of.
Although canal walking is flat and not too taxing, the problem is you can sometimes see where you are going a long way ahead. That can be dispiriting when you've already come a long way.
That can be relieved when the banks are as colourful as this.
We were getting close to our destination in Fort Augustus. The rusting boat on the other side of the canal is the Scot II. It was once used as an ice breaker on the canal, before carrying tourists. There is a restoration trust, but they don't seem to be making a lot of progress.
It was now beginning to rain heavily.
The trek into town was not pleasant, which is a shame, because Fort Augustus is quite pretty and there is always some movement of boats through the big flight of locks there.
We just had our heads down by this point.
We crossed the River Oich to the finish of the leg. The bridge piers in the photo are all that remain here of the Spean Bridge to Fort Augustus railway, the line of which we followed earlier.
Now, we were stuck. Irene was not going to be able to pick us for some time. Luckily, Bruce knew a man who could. His mate Donald was kind enough to give us a lift back to the car at Laggan, otherwise we might have been forced to sit in a bar or café, gently steaming away in our soaked waterproofs.
That all worked out and when the two of us came back, we decided to check a possible alteration to tomorrow. It was supposed to be a short walk and we wanted to see if we could extend it to a spot convenient for cars. That would allow us to hopefully cut down following legs, especially the last one. We really did not want to end up in Inverness, knackered after a 13 or 14 mile hike. Luckily, the spot I had in mind would work exactly as planned.
So, back to Fort Augustus and our rented apartment for a fish supper and a cold beer. We had intended to have the fish and chips, sitting in the sun watching boats navigating the locks, but the rain put paid to that. Remarkably, watching boats on canals has a name - gangoozling! Amazing.
DAY 4 Thursday 5th June 2025 Fort Augustus to Invermoriston (then Craig nan Eun).
After a bacon roll in Fort Augustus, we drove to Invermoriston to meet our friends Jim and Jacque. We are all members of the same walking group, the Dinosaurs. We left their car in Invermoriston and went back to Fort Augustus to start the walk.
The route takes you along a tarred road on the outskirts of the village, but it soon turns off into the woods.
We left the pleasant woods and begin to climb steeply through a partially felled coniferous plantation.
Once at the top of the climb, it is a pleasant walk along the forestry track with some good views over Loch Ness.
We soon reach the junction of the high and low routes. Whilst the high route claims to have magnificent views it also has a descent described as "knee shattering". I don't need that in my life, so we continue as planned on the low route.
Both routes are the same alleged distance, but we are in the trees more, whereas the high route is in much more open country. The low route is not all enclosed, however, and it was getting warmer.
We did encounter some showers as well. Here is Sharon at Allt na Criche. Criche usually means a boundary or the end of a journey. Allt is a stream, but this stream certainly didn't mark the end of our journey, so I guess the stream forms some kind of boundary, perhaps between two estates.
We then pass through some very fine stands of trees, some of which were planted when Lord Lovat was the first chairman of the Forestry Commission.
There is also the odd gushing waterfall - not surprising given the rain we have encountered over the last few days.
The route begins to open out where we pass through areas of clear fell.
This opening up of views allows us a great look across the loch to Horseshoe Crag. I wonder why they called it that?
It is quite impressive and you can take a boat trip on the Loch to see it close up. As it happened there was one there while we were taking in the view.
You can also see more rain running down the loch.
Finding a seat is always welcome.
Stopping does provide an opportunity for the midges to attack, although we were not bothered too much by them - at least, not yet! I was not resting, I had a stone in my shoe! Honest!
There was a German couple that we had previously met coming down the path. The photo is not good, but they were there.
From the junction of the two routes it is mainly downhill through the woods into Invermoriston.
Having a look over the bridge at the River Moriston, before we got to the car park, the picnic bench and lunch - in the sun!
It wasn't just lunchtime, it was decision time. Do we call it a day, or do we look to get some more done to save ourselves later on?
We had only (ha ha) walked about 7.5 miles, so we decided to go on. That would prove to be a good decision in the longer term, but a nightmare to begin with. We drove to a forestry road entrance that the map suggested allowed access to the Way. We left a car and returned to Invermoriston to get going.
We started through the village away from the main roads.
OK, so far. However, it became a steep climb on tarmac. A climb of close to 560 feet that never seemed to end. It was really hard after 7.5 miles and then a stop for lunch.
It didn't stop, but we did pretend to look at the view, just to catch our breath.
Luckily, there was a very welcome seat where route left the road and joined a track.
Uphill didn't quite stop there, though and the track did keep climbing, just a bit less precipitously. On reflection we were glad that this wasn't what we were going to have to do the next morning.
The views were superb - almost worth the effort.
It was getting to be quite warm by now, luckily we managed to find a bit of shade from the sun in this rather strange stone shelter.
It was a tad cramped, but it did look like someone may have slept here. There were piles of moss on the floor. Perhaps it was the crazy young man we had met on day 2!
This building was noted on an archaeological survey, but no real information is given on a date or purpose. It definitely seems like some kind of shelter, but assigning an age to it is impossible without some sort of context. It was fascinating, though.
The remainder of the walk was within the forest block. Happily, the track that I thought would take us to the car, did, indeed, do that.
That saved us 3.7 miles off the start of the next day , which was due to be about 14 or 15 miles. We had therefore walked 11 miles today. As we were now over halfway, we drove home, had a quick bath and then were picked up by Jimmy and driven out for dinner prepared by Jacque. Very good it was too, because I probably couldn't have been bothered to cook after all of that!
DAY 5 Friday 6th June 2025 Creag nan Eun to Drumnadrochit
Today, we were starting out on our own. We planned to meet Jim and Jacque again at a place called Grotaig to finish the last few miles into Drum.
Our son drove us to the forestry track at Creag nan Eun to start the day's walk.
Here we are ready to go, safe in the knowledge from yesterday that the path would take us up to the proper route.
We did also get some encouragement from our granddaughter.
Then we were off.
Allegedly there were only 9 miles to go.
They looked like they might be long miles!
There were some views across the loch.
I'm not sure whether the Tibetan prayer flags were supposed to give us further encouragement.
There was certainly a bit of encouragement needed, as we climbed up to meet the high route.
I'm pretty sure this was a sheep and not some poor walker who didn't quite make it.
We came to the end of the forestry road and carried on on a much more agreeable path through some nice woodland.
Another detour, but not a long one.
The detour was for tree felling, which meant that there was an open view of the loch. This was remarkably timely. Our daughter had forwarded us a message to say that the Red Arrows were due to fly up Loch Ness just about that time. We stood with phones poked through the wire thinking this would be a good spot for a photo. There was a fair chance we might be looking down on them as we were at about 1000 feet.
However, all we saw was an approaching shower - because the aircraft had changed their schedule at the last minute and were about 80 miles away!
Disappointed, we carried on and we were approaching civilisation and could see buildings in the distance. We were a bit disappointed because the Harry Potter train and the Red Arrows on the same walk would have been pretty good. However, buildings meant Jim and Jacque were nearby and so was a tearoom with supposedly great cakes.
Jim and Jacque soon met us and we went to straight to the Grotaig tearoom and pottery. It is pretty much at the end of a road to nowhere, but it looked from the outside like it was well worth a visit.
So it proved.
The gingerbread was outstanding and the tea was very welcome.
It was all very dinky doo.
Suitably fortified and carrying a bit more in the rucksack than we previously had, we set off down the tarmac road towards Drum.
It is a bit rustic out here, to be honest.
A woolery (I had to check) is a place for processing wool or selling wool fabrics. Behind the woolery is Meall Fuar-Mhonaidh, basically, the cold rounded hill. Although only 699 metres high, it is very prominent and it dominates much of Loch Ness.
By this point, I wasn't sure I could go that much more slowly.
The route departs a little from the road and runs parallel to it. It is much easier on the feet than the tarmac. Meall Fuar-Mhonaidh is still there.
The country is opening up and there are extensive views to the north west towards Ben Wyvis. We must be getting closer to home, because we can see Ben Wyvis from our living room. Like Meall Fuar-Mhonaidh, Ben Wyvis is a dominant mass, but it rises to 1046 metres (3432 feet).
Remarkably, we get a quick shower of hailstones! I managed to catch one.
Sharp wire and soft cotton grass.
Increasingly we are seeing orchids, generally the marsh orchids, like this Northern Marsh one. They don't just grow in or near water, but also along the roadside, like here.
We are too soon back on the road for a little while and we are asked to go slow again, or is it that there are slow cats on the loose.?
We are not on the road for so long and divert into woodland, where this strange growth appeared. Generally, epicormic growth, which is thick uncontrolled growth, is a response to some form of stress in the tree. I have never seen anything like this before. Maybe it is some other form of abnormality, but I couldn't find any match on the web. Weird.
We begin to descend through the plantation quite quickly and my knee certainly felt it, despite the soft larch needle carpet below our feet.
We can now see Drum below us. It would have been much better if someone had been more considerate in the siting of the electricity pole!
The last stretch into Drum was hard for me. It dropped from 200 to 30 metres quite steeply at times and the ground was very rocky and awkward. I was really glad to get to the flat and to find the local Pipe Band had come out to meet me.
Well, at least a picture of a pipe band was there.
We were all very tired by the time we stood in the car park for the end of leg photo.
We had walked almost 14 miles over 6 hours today, with Jim and Jacque doing the last 5 miles with us. If we had not done the 3 to 4 miles from Invermoriston the day before, I seriously wonder if we would have got to Drum at all. We were going to try and do another 14 miles again tomorrow to reduce our mileage on the last leg!
All we had to do now was drive home, ice, eat, bath, bed - probably in that order.
DAY 6 Saturday 7th June 2025 Drumnadrochit to Blackfold
The first mile and a half out of Drum is on the footway at the side of the A82, a road I have driven more times than I care to think about. It is reasonably straight for much of that distance and cars, buses and lorries tend to belt along uncomfortably close to walkers. Not only is it not pleasant, it is not exactly scenic either. Also, you can't hear yourself think, never mind hold a conversation. For those reasons, we decided to miss that wee section off from our walk. Our daughter and grandson drove us to Temple Pier after we had left our car at a disused quarry car park at Blackfold, well beyond our originally intended target of Abriachan. If we could get to Blackfold, it was a hundred yards from where we had parked to the Way and it would also save us some miles on our last day.
Here we are ready to go. Liam didn't come with us - apparently there was a game of football to play.
All we had to do was get across the A82 and we were on the Way. The path was narrow, but quite attractive.
It climbed slowly away from the road and the traffic noise, which opened up views of Loch Ness, no monster, though. You can see from the steepness of the field why the climb was slow! It really was quite fine, dry and warm.
Whilst it was all very benign the sky was still a bit threatening in the west, and that is where most of our weather comes from. You can't really make it out, but Urquhart Castle is on the point of land behind me. The castle is hugely attractive to tourists and between 400000 and 500000 go there every year. If people visit us at home, that's the place they want to go to, so we have been quite a few times before.
Abriachan is the highest point on the low route of the Way at about 370 metres. We had started this morning at about 20 metres above sea level, so we had a bit of climbing to do, and it was relentless. The gloominess of the forest didn't help.
Looking back downhill didn't help either. It was steep and the people who used to live hereabouts knew that too, because it is called An Leacann in Gaelic. This means a broad slope or steep shelving ground. It can also signify a green steep slope, but the green has long disappeared under the shadow of the conifers.
Near the top there was a wee blue box. Inside was a questionnaire and pens to fill it in. I can't resist these types of things, so I dutifully completed it, noting that the thing I had least liked was the relentless uphill stretches. I don't expect they will survey a new, flatter route on the basis of my input.
No sooner had we left the forest behind than it started raining, and it didn't stop for some time.
We saw our first house in a few miles at Corryfoyness. There would appear to have been a larger township here, although by 1875 only one building was roofed. There is also a nearby hut circle suggesting habitation over hundreds of years. The existing house is pretty lonely and the land is very poor, making it difficult to see how much of a living was ever made out of the place.
We were walking on an old drove road, over which Highlanders would drive their cattle to markets in the south, covering 10-12 miles a day.
It was still raining, and we were a bit dispirited by now. We came across an interpretive board which gave us hope that the Abriachan forestry car park was at least within reach. Of course, I knew that from our maps, but it was so wet, they weren't coming out of the waterproof case very often!
Bizarrely, we then met the engineer walker we had met on the first day. He was actually walking the other way! He had been getting his luggage carried for him from place to place and rather than do the uphill that we had done, he was going to be going downhill!
We finally got to a bit of downhill on the way to the Abriachan Forestry car park. Abriachan forest is owned by the community and there is a range of facilities at the car park - picnic benches, toilets, walks, accommodation, playgrounds. The sort of place to take your grandchildren, and we have many times. So we knew where we were going and what we would find.
We did not expect to find voracious hordes of midges! We really had hardly been bothered with them in the whole trip, so to be lunch when you're having lunch was not at all pleasant.
The rain had stopped, so I did get brave for a quick photo without the net.
It was torture!
After our hasty lunch, we carried on to try and get to Blackfold. The route took us across the public road and into more woodland, but the midges seemed to have been left behind.
In the woods there is an allegedly eccentric eco café. Ordinarily, I would have been keen to have a look, perhaps some tea and cake. However, it has some very mixed reviews, so we gave it a miss.
Really rather suddenly, we leave the woodland and emerge onto the tarmac road. We are with the tar for a few miles now and it is pretty hard on the feet and legs.
Eventually, the road goes through much more open countryside and you can see for miles.
Ben Wyvis is getting closer!
After a short rest and a snack under an old Scots Pine, we trudge on. We can see the road stretching on for some time and we had already walked miles as you can see behind us. The prize was that the route departed from the road up ahead and a change of landscape and underfoot conditions was promised.
Sure enough, a fine track appears and starts to diverge from the road. It isn't as if traffic noise was an issues. I doubt if we saw more than half a dozen cars over three miles walking.
We were sharing the track with this little guy. I think it is a Cabbage White butterfly caterpillar, but I'm not 100% sure. If it is, I hope it stays here and leaves my lettuce and the likes well alone!
We saw at least three of these marker stones. I can find out nothing about them. A dabhach pronounced doch, but often spelt davoch, is an ancient measure of land, thought to derive from Pictish rather than Gaelic. There are lots of davoch place names around Inverness, one of which is Dochgarroch, which is said to mean an area of rough ground. The ground is certainly rough here. More interesting is that both the Dochfour and Dochgarroch burns run very close to where the stones are. My guess is that they are some kind of land measurement or boundary markers, but who knows?
It was actually quite pleasant walking and nice to see something other than trees close up. We could see the hills to the south of Inverness, so we knew we were getting closer to home.
It had been a bit of a trial at times, what with the rain and then the interminable road walking, so we were really pleased to reach the car.
We had been walking for 6 hours and covered just over 13 miles. It was time to drive home for a cup of tea and some cake. We knew that was waiting for us because Sharon's sister, Sandra and her husband, Chris had arrived to walk with us tomorrow. They had even brought a meal for us. It was all very kind of them to look after us so well, considering it was their wedding anniversary.
A good excuse for some fizz in the sun room. After some ice and a hot bath, that is. We don't normally look that well scrubbed after walking so far.
Cheers to the end of our second last day. It was amazing that we had managed this so far and we were almost looking forward to tomorrow.
DAY 7 Sunday 8th June 2025 Blackfold to Inverness
Well, today did not start well. After breakfast, our son-in-law, Darren, came to take us to Blackfold. No sooner had we left the city limits than the roadside signs told us that the A82 was closed due to an accident near to the junction that we needed. About a minute later we encountered the queue of traffic. A quick call to our daughter confirmed through Traffic Scotland that the road was closed at the junction - we couldn't get to Blackfold by that route.
It was a fairly lengthy diversion onto single track roads, with the likelihood that the bulk of traffic would be coming against us.
We set off to find the alternative way, which was indeed, very busy with traffic coming the other way. A great many drivers were clearly tourists and had no clue as to the etiquette of single track roads. It was a bit of nightmare, lightened only by our sighting of a Pine Marten running along the road near Kiltarlity!
Whilst nobody was fatally injured in the crash, the single person involved was hospitalised with serious injuries. We were merely delayed and diverted.
We were about an hour behind our schedule when we got to the car park to start our walk.
We started out in mixed woodland and it really was very pleasant walking and surroundings.
There was a nice passage through more mature trees and all at a gentle downhill grade.
The guidebook noted the existence of a wall beside the path and we did stay with it for a very long way.
There was also the remains of a building by the side of the path. This looked like it was once a house and it is noted as unroofed on the 1876 OS map, so it would appear to have been abandoned for some considerable time, but the occupants would have been used to seeing cattle drovers passing by on this route. If only those stones could talk!
We did get a quick view north to the Black Isle and, of course, Ben Wyvis on the left. The water is the Beauly Firth.
Once we got round Dunain Hill, we were on ground we had walked on a few times before. This is the new fence around an old reservoir. It, and another, lie above the old Lunatic Asylum as it was called, but I don't know whether the reservoirs served that building or not.
By now, it was getting very warm.
We took the opportunity to have a seat overlooking Inverness.
It was all downhill from now on. Sometimes it was quite steeply downhill and my knees did not like that very much at all.
The fine looking building here is the old Lunatic Asylum. It has ceased to be called that or to be used to house people with psychiatric illnesses which it did between 1864 and 2000. It has a very chequered past, with many people being held there when they had no need to be. Certainly the Victorian understanding of mental illness was very poor, with some patients being locked up here because of fear of impending marriage or, conversely, excitement at impending marriage. I remember once visiting the Highland Archive Centre and being shown the patient book from Craig Dunain. The overwhelming majority of patients during one period were women and every one, without exception, had their brains removed and examined after death. It was as if the doctors were looking for some physical manifestation of "illnesses" as diverse as nervousness and greed!
The hospital is now flats and the grounds are now filled with new houses.
Still we went downhill.
Eventually, we found the flat ground and we were soon back beside our old friend, the canal.
Probably less than 2 miles to go from here.
Remarkably, and happily, our children, their partners and all our grandchildren were at the swing bridge across the A82 to meet us. What a joy that was, especially as they bought us ice creams to sit and enjoy.
The 99s were very welcome, indeed.
After the ice creams, we walked on down to the River Ness and along to the Ness Islands. The Islands are a hidden gem, reasonably close to the city centre and a great place to walk and relax, with the river on either side of you.
To get to the Islands you need to go across one of the shoogly bridges across the river. They are, to my mind, very graceful.
Clearly Liam was really excited to see us.
The ducks were not so impressed!
Every time we come here, the kids all want to climb on this old tree trunk, which has eyes and a mouth that I seem to have completely missed out of the photo! It is supposed to be the Loch Ness Monster.
Once we get through the Islands, we walk along beside the river. Not too far to go now. The cars are parked here, so we can get rid of the backpacks and sticks and anything else we don't need to carry.
Oh no! I had forgotten there were steps to come. Luckily Cameron was there to help me.
We made it!
Actually, it wasn't really the official end, that would be Flora MacDonald's statue in front of the Castle. However, Flora is out of bounds as the Castle is undergoing significant refurbishment, and will soon re-open as a major tourist facility, telling the story of the Highlands and Inverness. So, the finish line is probably about 150 metres short of where it should be, but we weren't complaining. It was about 100 metres closer to the pub!
Today we had walked 8 miles over 4 hours. Our grand total for the walk was 83 miles. The app also says that our total ascent over the 7 days amounted to 8627 feet (about 2630 metres), only 200 feet short of twice the height of Ben Nevis. Whatever the exact distances and heights involved were, it was a pretty epic undertaking.
The Grandsons, Liam, Robbie and Cameron joined us. Millie was already at the pub with her father, getting his parents a much needed cold drink!
I had promised myself that if I finished this walk, I would be ending up at the Castle Tavern, so here we are!
We enjoyed that.
What made it better was the family were there, as were our neighbours, Pam and Hugh who had kept my greenhouse plants alive for a week. They had waited outside the pub for an hour for us to arrive! At least, they said they had waited outside!
After our beer, it was time to get home to celebrate properly. The grandchildren had got there first to surprise me with party poppers!
They, and their parents had decorated the house as well.
Once we got over that surprise, it was time to celebrate outside with our family, neighbours Pam & Hugh, and friends Susan & Robin. Susan and Robin had looked after Sandra and Chris's blind dog, Blue, for the afternoon. It was really good to see them all, but some of my better whisky took a bit of a hit!
Either Sandra was a bit on the edge of conformity, or she needed to get her baffies on because her feet were killing her!
We were definitely home and finished, because Ben Wyvis is just about in the middle of the picture! We had really been getting closer.
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As a memento of our epic journey, Sandra and Chris gave us a personalised picture of the Great Glen Way. As if we could ever forget!
This was a personal challenge for me, but it wasn't just me that completed it. Firstly, I don't think I would have succeeded without the people who walked with me.
My wife was there for the whole journey, giving me the will and the strength to carry on when I sometimes just wanted to sit down and not get back up. I have nothing but admiration and respect for her. She really is the best person I know. She made me do it.
My brother, Bruce, didn't have to do any of this, but I really appreciated his support on the walk and the help that he and Irene gave in terms of logistics. I was less enamoured of his continual droning on about the various means of electricity generation and distribution!
Jim and Jacque, who not only walked with us and drove cars hither and thither, but also fed us well, when we might have made do with a pizza out of the freezer.
Sandra and Chris, who did the last leg. I know Sharon appreciated having family with her for that last walk as I did for the first walks.
Our family, Elain and Iain, their partners Darren and Katie and all our wonderful grandchildren, Robbie, Liam, Mille and Cameron. They brighten every day.
I know I don't do small talk and all these companions probably helped Sharon retain her sanity.
We also had huge support and good wishes from friends and neighbours, the members of our walking group and all my fellow knee sufferers. These kind wishes really did matter and they make you determined not to let these supporters down. They willed us to do it.
Finally, I wouldn't have started this, or even contemplated it, without the Knee Mentor, Clare and Optimizer Prime, Nikki! I have nothing but praise for the whole knee improvement programme. There are days when my knee aches, but I would still try and walk a bit at least, because I've become trained to do it. As for split squats, I could gladly consign them to the darkest recesses of my memory, but I know they will lead to better knees and maybe I can contemplate some other challenges, but maybe not on such a grand scale!
I really am glad and proud that we did it.
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