June 30, 1991: Mamore Lodge to Fort William

Kinlochleven from Mamore Lodge

There was a dramatic view from Lord Belper’s window on the morning of Sunday, June 30th. The narrow chasm of Kinlochleven was filled with puffy clouds and fog, with one or two rare patches of blue and an even rarer ray of sunshine – and the village below was often obscured by mist. Gavan and I hurried over our packing so as to be all ready when the breakfast hour arrived at 8:00. I had my last full breakfast and Gavan his last scrambled eggs. We had received our packed lunches, including a giant bottle of lemonade, and paid up by 8:45, when we took our leave. I wanted an early start because we had close to 15 miles to negotiate by the end of the day.

One reason I had chosen Mamore Lodge was that much of the elevation rise from Kinlochleven had already been achieved on the previous afternoon. Now we could rejoin the Way by using a higher level road past cottages and a radio mast – with much of the elevation already gained. Unfortunately, however, we were soon walking in a light rain and it was necessary for us to put on full wet gear. After the WHW had joined us from the left we continued west on the Military Road past two derelict cottages, Tigh-na-sleubhaich and Lairigmor. There were lots of other walkers coming up behind us; two were even wearing dreaded rain ponchos, though theirs were a Minnesota Viking purple.

Gavan asked me to continue my commentary on Existentialism and I began again with Camus, but Gavan was too literal-minded to accept the proposition that, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy,” and, besides, his mind kept wandering, so that I’d be asked every now and then to go back to square one. The lecture was becoming a labor of Sisyphus itself and I was finding this considerably annoying. When I launched a disquisition on the short attention span of today’s youth Gavan defended the proposition that there was no point concentrating on anything that wasn’t fun. I told him I hoped that audiences attending his orchestral concerts had a little more patience than that, but he continued to provide an impassioned defense of the closed mind and eventually, as we rounded a corner and headed north on the Military Road, I retreated in dumbfounded silence. Later Gavan said that he was only joking.

On the moorland near Blar a’Chaorainn

There were now quite a few walkers and some cyclists heading south, having started from Fort William on the motor road to Lundavra. The West Highland Way, however, heads uphill – after a long fairly level stretch – at Blar a’Chaorainn and here we encountered two elderly walkers, one with a cane, whom we had seen many times on this trip. As we took the high road we lost sight of them forever; perhaps they took the more straightforward lower route. I’m just glad I didn’t mention this possibility to Gavan; he might have wanted to flip a coin.

The path to Glen Nevis proved to be a delightful one, much more straightforward and not nearly as strenuous as I had anticipated. We passed through more forestry and then found ourselves in open moorland with magnificent views forward. The rain was finishing and the sky was lifting somewhat, though there was still plenty of cloud about. I mentioned to Gavan that we were now setting trip distance records with every footfall, having just passed the 100 mile mark set last June on the Wicklow Way. We stopped for lunch at a spot where we could rest our packs against a grassy bank above the trail.

After washing down the Spam sandwiches with some lemonade we continued forward. We could now see, beyond the ridgeline we had yet to climb, the trail snaking up Ben Nevis – but the summit of Britain’s highest mountain was obscured by the clouds. We dropped down to a stream in the forest again and then headed for a col to the northwest of Dun Deardail, a hill in the grassy ridge above us. Gavan, having cleared his mind, was now interested in the resumption of my comments about Camus, and so I finished these as we climbed steeply toward the skyline, two Sisyphuses for whom someone had provided steps in the steepest sections. We had a rest at the top and some liquid, our last uphill of the trip behind us.

Then we began a descent into Glen Nevis. Some of the route was not so well marked here, but we guessed right, descending to a path under dark larches and then down some muddy switchbacks with guardrails to a forestry road. Coming down behind us on this stretch were two chaps, one Asian, from Harrow. We fell into conversation with them as we marched along the wide road, comparing our experiences of the route. Naturally they had completed the WHW in fewer days that we had (and they were planning to climb Ben Nevis the next day). Gavan modestly provided the current chapter of his autobiography by stating, “I go to school in Boston.”

The lads left us after a while to reach the youth hostel. We continued in a westerly direction before taking a final bit of path down to the motor road. I was feeling a bit blue. I told Gavan that it was hard to imagine that I would ever have an opportunity to complete nine days of walking or to better the 106 mile total of this trip, and that I was now perhaps reaching the summit of my own career as a walker.

Glen Nevis

There was pavement for us to use on the final two miles into Fort William. Once or twice there were drops but I didn’t have to put my rain cape back on. It wasn’t too pleasant to face the rushing traffic and all the other signs of advancing civilization but at least the end was near. We turned one final corner and neared the bridge over the Nevis River (I explained to Gavan that as a scholar of Alexander Hamilton High School I was already a Nevian). The walker in red socks scooted by at this point on a bicycle; this seemed quite mysterious – perhaps he had borrowed one at the youth hostel. His jodhpurs did look more appropriate over wheels.

The walk came to an end at a roundabout at the southern end of the bridge. A woolen mill had memorialized the moment with a large green sign. I asked a tourist lady to take our picture as we posed in triumph before the sign. By this time Gavan was wearing my Tiger cap and I was wearing his California one (although the latter had lost its top button under the pressures of the rain poncho). It was 4:45.

Gavan wanted to find a loo and a pub (or both) so, as we had plenty of time before the evening meal at our guesthouse, we headed directly into town (Gavan needlessly doubting my direction sense) and, after passing civic buildings and a shopping precinct, found a convenient pub where we settled down for an hour and a half  – it took a while for them to change the lager barrel. I used the time to pull off my rain pants. The music was very loud in the pub and it was soon crowded with young people. Still able to walk, we left at 6:30 and headed back past the civic green to climb uphill to Alma Road, the quiet suburban street on which our b&b was located.

“I had quite given you up for lost,” said our landlord, when we at last pushed the buzzer. We followed his swishing kilt upstairs and he showed us to our room. There was both a bathroom and a shower and we each had a quick clean up before going down to dinner. There was only one other guest, a traveling salesman who kept to himself. The meal was quite good and we were full when it was time to go back upstairs. I explained that we would have to leave at a very early hour the next day and our host said he would leave something cold for us and that tea and biscuits would be served at 10:00. We had planned the end of the day all wrong. We should have gone to the b&b first, napped, then had dinner, and gone to the pub. Now all we could do was nap; we never made it to the pub, though we did manage to get down for tea and biscuits. I was trying to teach Gavan the meaning of kitsch and it was easy to demonstrate this concept with the porcelain dolls and other knickknacks that fought each other for every square inch of space in the lounge. Soon after our snack we were back in bed for good.

We arose shortly after 6:00 the next morning and did all of our packing, bringing our packs downstairs and helping ourselves to juice and cereal in an empty dining room. It was just past 7:00 when we shut the door behind us and headed down the hill. The train station was only a few blocks away but we had to make our way through a garbage strewn parking lot in order to reach the front entrance. There were quite a few people about. I bought two tickets to Glasgow and we waited until 7:21 when our train backed in. Seated two rows behind us was the chap with the red socks, on his way home. We left Fort William at 7:28.

We tried to get a good view of Ben Nevis, still topped with snowfields on its north side. There followed a delightful journey, some three and a half hours in length, on the West Highland line. Rain pelted down a number of times as we began to re-cross familiar territory, Rannoch Moor, Tyndrum Upper, Bridge of Orchy, the Auch Glen viaduct, Crianlarich, the east shore of Loch Lomond. After we left the lake the countryside became quite ordinary and as we entered Glasgow’s outskirts it was hard not to doze off. We were very tired.

There was plenty of time for us to walk from Queen’s Street to the Central Station, but, of course, it was pouring with rain as we did so. Gavan bought some snacks when we reached the Central Station while I waited for them to announce a track for the 12:00 Euston train. We had seat reservations on the latter, which soon began its five and half hour journey south. We finished all the food in our packs and I ate another BR cheeseburger. Gavan read the newspaper and I gave him the puzzle book, which he had grown fond of on the walk, and we finished several puzzles together, including his first diagramless. The hurtling of the high-speed train and the problems of concentrating on the bobbing print made me a bit queasy. Gavan said I turned a whiter shade of pale as I dozed fitfully; he stood near the end of the car so that he could trigger the door every now and then and send some fresh air into the car.

We arrived at Euston at 5:35 and after a hug and our secret handshake we parted company and I made my way back to Maida Vale. He was on the phone as I walked through the door. He wanted to know if Dorothy preferred my new California cap to the old Tiger one that he had kept as a souvenir of a most successful adventure.

Footpath Index:

England: A Chilterns Hundred | The Chiltern Way | The Cleveland Way | The Coast-to-Coast Path | The Coleridge Way | The Cotswold Way | The Cumberland Way | The Cumbria Way | The Dales Way | The Furness Way | The Green London Way | The Greensand Way | The Isle of Wight Coast Path | The London Countryway | The London Outer Orbital Path | The Norfolk Coast Path | The North Downs Way | The Northumberland Coast Path | The Peddars Way | The Pennine Way | The Ridgeway Path | The Roman Way | The Saxon Shore Way | The South Downs Way | The South West Coast Path | The Thames Path | The Two Moors Way | The Vanguard Way | The Wealdway | The Westmorland Way | The White Peak Way | The Yorkshire Wolds Way