Day Forty Seven

Sunday 19 September – Tyndrum to Inveroran

Next to my hotel in Tyndrum was the Green Welly Stop, which is a bit of an institution round here. It's effectively a service area for traffic on the A82 and A85 roads, which are joined together between Crianlarich and Tyndrum. There's a shop, a restaurant, petrol pumps and everything else the tired and hungry tourist needs en route to the West or the North, and of course you can also buy your souvenirs if you are travelling the other way.

The shop didn't appear to have any fruit, so I walked the 50 yards to the only other shop in the village, where I stocked up with all I would need for a short day's walking. The West Highland Way leaves the road just by the shop, heading almost due North. It was raining, not hard but steadily, and all the tops were swathed in cloud, which hardly shifted all day. The rain, however, only lasted about half an hour, with just a bit of occasional mizzle after that.

It was maypole ribbon time again. On the left the main road, with the footpath in the middle and taking up the right hand position, the railway – just the one again now, the Fort William and Mallaig line. Very soon the order changed, the path going over a bridge to the right, again using one of the old military roads.

The hillside rose fairly steeply to my right; sheep and cattle grazed peacefully in the rain. In less than a mile it was sheep creep time again. Actually it might have been a cattle creep – there was plenty of room for a cow or a short walker to pass under the railway without stooping.

Mercifully the main road swung away to the left flank of the valley; even on a Sunday morning there was plenty of traffic as the churchgoers rushed to catch the service (!). The railway, meanwhile, took an opposite course, looping round two side valleys, which it crossed on long bridges.

The old road here was a feat of engineering; a substantial retaining wall had been built to keep the track from falling into the burn below. I followed the track down to cross a larger burn, the Allt Kinglass, on a farm bridge. It was then level and straight walking the remaining three miles to Bridge of Orchy.

Highland Cattle strolled across the track, completely unconcerned by the presence of a damp walker. The first bit of Bridge of Orchy I came to was the railway station, looking suitably bleak against the backdrop of swirling clouds obscuring hilltops and dragging against spruce trees. Beyond the station was the main road and, much more appealing, the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, where coffee and something was taken in company of about a dozen other walkers.

Beside the hotel runs a side road which goes over the eponymous bridge. This road is a dead end, going just a mile beyond my overnight stop, the hotel at Inveroran. The road takes a long Highland Way, which goes over the top. The climb was the first real work I'd done all day; muscles which had idled through the morning were suddenly called to duty and, after a bit of grumbling, they all responded admirably.

After passing through a belt of trees, the track grew less steep as it reached a bare, grassy hilltop, not actually in the clouds itself but with good views of the many tops which still were. Then it was downhill all the way on a decent surface, wide enough to take a Land Rover.

The path met the road almost immediately opposite the hotel. Despite the early hour (I had only walked 9 to 10 miles), the hotel was ready for me. I relaxed in the very pleasant lounge and typed these words.