Day Forty Eight

Monday 20 September – Inveroran to Kinlochleven

This was to be my longest day on the West Highland Way, and I expected it to prove the most difficult. But the early walking was dead easy, along the road from the Inveroran Hotel to cross a river called the Abhainn Shira at Victoria Bridge.

Shortly after this, at Forest Lodge, the motor road ends and a track begins. Until the early 1930s the road continued across Black Mount and Rannoch Moor, but now the track is maintained for the benefit of walkers and, I guess, stalkers. The route has a distinguished pedigree. When, at the end of the 18^th Century, many of the old military roads were falling into disrepair, a new road was deemed necessary, one which kept to lower ground and would therefore be easier to navigate. When a first class engineering job was called for, Telford was the man. Denied the easier crossing of burns higher up (the military roads often only needed fords), Telford constructed some substantial bridges for the road, which survive today.

The uphill gradient was gentle(ish) and the surface was sound, if a little stony at first. High hills loomed up on the left, with more rolling country on the right. At Bà Bridge the River Bà thundered beneath one of Telford's finest. In bad weather this is one of the few places you could get any shelter, although you would have to be careful if you stood under the bridge while the river was in spate. Today, the weather was far from bad.

Although dark clouds were rolling across, and continued to do so all day, there were never more than a few seconds of rain. Cloud boiled dramatically around the tops. Rannoch Moor opened up on the right. It looked deceptively benign, especially when illuminated by fleeting shafts of sunlight, but I wouldn't care to risk setting off across country – a soggy experience, I reckon.

As the track begins a gentle descent, I caught my first sight of the Kingshouse Hotel, with the narrowing expanse of Glen Coe behind it. Before reaching the hotel, I passed the chair lift for the Glencoe ski resort, the buildings being discreetly hidden behind a stand of trees. The track joins the road to the resort, then crosses the main A82 road, and becomes pedestrian-only again down to the hotel, where I enjoyed coffee (two) and something before entering the pass of Glen Coe.

How to sum up Glen Coe (or Glencoe) in a few words, when millions have been spoken and written on the area and its history, some of them true. It is a glaciated, U-shaped valley, about half a mile wide and narrowing to much less at the pass about half way along its 10-mile length. Most of the land used to belong to the Clan MacDonald, and now belongs to the National Trust for Scotland. But it is, of course, the eponymous massacre which made the headlines, and is still argued over today. In 1692, when Jacobites were resisting the installation of William of Orange on the British throne, a party of pro-Government Campbells accepted hospitality from the Jacobite MacDonalds, then repayed their hosts by slaughtering 38 of them. The involvement of the King and his ministers was suspected. Enquiries and cover-ups followed, and the controversy continues. That’s it in a nutshell, and if you want any more, there are libraries full of books on the subject, and gigabytes on the Web.

There was a big climb to come, but before that the West Highland Way shadowed the road for about three rather unsatisfactory miles. For no logical reason the path climbs obliquely up the side of the glen, with a rocky surface, much of it washed over by the many burns pouring down from the hills. I'm sure it's an ancient route and all that, but it's very silly, the more so because, having gained a lot of height, the path loses it all again when it drops back to run alongside the road in the middle of the valley. Harrumph. But then, in all senses, things look up.

The path turned at right angles to the road, and headed steeply, later very steeply upwards. This is the route known as the Devil's Staircase to Kinlochleven, my target for the day. It is not at all devilish. After my moans earlier about the path, I have to acknowlege that the engineering of the uphill section is superb – well-drained with a good surface throughout. After winding relentlessly upwards, the path reached the zigzags of the staircase itself. These are nicely calculated to make the climb more gently in its later stages. At just over 1800 feet the path levels out, passes between two rocky hills, and begins its descent into the valley of the River Leven.

The climb had been less than a thousand feet from Glen Coe, but Kinlochleven is almost at sea level, so the path has a long way to wind down. The drop is not straight into the valley, rather the path passes round the flanks of a succession of headlands, sometimes contouring and sometimes heading downwards. Eventually a particularly rocky stretch of path led me to a track used, signs warned, by vehicles.

A line of pipes could be seen coming down the valley from the right, and ahead were some buildings. These are part of a jigsaw which is gradually solved as you approach Kinlochleven. Given its idyllic position, Kinlochleven might have owed its very existence to tourism. There are mountains to climb, paths to walk (and cycle), and enough scenery to last a liftetime of holidays. But it was aluminium which established the village, hamlets either side of the River Leven being joined up to serve the smelter built (together with the hydrelectric scheme I had already encountered) early in the 20^th Century. The very end of that Century, the smelter closed, too small by then to compete on the world stage.

The former smelter now has two uses, as a mountain activity centre (complete with the world's highest indoor ice-climbing facility and the UK's highest indoor articulated rock climbing wall and bouldering facility) and a brewery. The activity centre, known as the Ice Factor, has been instrumental in reinventing Kinlochleven a tourist centre.

The vehicle track from the upper to the lower manifestations of the hydro-electric scheme was easy to walk except in a couple of places where the surface appeared to have been undermined by flood water. While the track takes a wide detour to lose height, the water-pipes plunge steeply downhill.The WHW turns aside before the old smelter buildings are reached. I meekly followed as it crossed the water pipes on a very dodgy wooden bridge, the River Leven on a better bridge, and then skirted a housing estate before following the river bank round to the main bridge, by which was the Tailrace Hotel, my overnight stop.