Day Fifty One

Saturday 6 November – Spean Bridge to Invergarry

The day was cold but bright, a wonderful day for a walk. From Spean Bridge I headed North West for a mile on a pavement by the A82. There wasn't much traffic yet. The scene was strangely different from what I always regard as normal. The tops of the mountains and hills were clear – the attendant clouds were lower down, filling the valleys and snagging on the trees. The sun was intermittently shining through gaps in the high cloud. It was exhilarating. Soon the Commando Memorial came in sight.

This memorial is dedicated to the men of the original British Commando Forces raised during World War II. Unveiled in 1952 by the Queen Mother, it has become one of Scotland's best-known monuments, both as a war memorial and as a tourist attraction offering views of Ben Nevis and Aonach Mòr. In 1949, the sculptor Scott Sutherland won a competition open to all Scottish sculptors for the commission. The memorial was officially unveiled by the Queen Mother in 1952.

The location was chosen because it is on the route from Spean Bridge railway station to the former Commando Training Centre at nearby Achnacarry Castle. Arriving prospective Commandos would get off the train after a 14-hour journey, load their kit bags onto waiting trucks and then speed march the 7 miles to the training centre in full kit with weapon, weighing a total of 36 pounds. Anyone not completing it within 60 minutes was immediately sent back to his unit.

A Garden of Remembrance, which was subsequently added to the site, is used by many surviving Word War II Commandos as the designated final resting place for their ashes. It has also been used as a place where many families have scattered ashes and erected tributes to loved ones who belonged to contemporary Commando units and who have died in more recent conflicts such as the Falklands War or in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The large car park, with space for coaches, was empty. Had I come on a coach, or in a car at a busy time, I might have just done the tourist thing, taken a few photos, admired the views of the mountains in the sun, and carried on. No harm in that. But being there on my own was very different. The defiant faces of the three sculpted men, the very personal memorials to recently killed soldiers in the Garden of Remembrance, and the hilltop setting, with other hills all round, made the experience extremely moving. It was a privilege to stand by the sculpture; it felt like an intrusion to stand amidst the plaques and crosses and flags and flowers, dedicated to husband or son or brother.

From here it was two miles down a minor road into the Great Glen proper, and into the mist. The temperature dropped a bit in the gloom, but by the time I reached the bottom of the glen, the sun had done its work and burned off much of the low-lying cloud. At Gairlochy the Caledonian Canal, which has on this stretch run from near Fort William, emerges by way of a large lock into the South West end of Loch Lochy. I crossed a bridge near the loch and turned on to a very quiet road which ran just above the shore.

This was my second stretch of the Great Glen Way, the first having been the very short bit in Fort William. The Way soon departed uphill, away from the lochside and into the trees. An excellent path climbed and then fell back to the road, crossing it and tumbling steeply down to the very edge of the loch. Loch Lochy is not one of the classic lochs, scenery-wise. The surrounding hills lack the splendour of some of the others. But it was still pretty magnificent on what was now a very sunny day.

The path had had the full hardcore and gravel treatment to “unsog” it. The Way is a Long Distance Path (the Scottish equivalent of our National Trails), and the best walking surfaces could be expected, and were duly deilvered.

Eventually the path drew back to the road, which hogs the shoreline through the nearly-joined hamlets of Achnachary, Bunarkaig and Clunes. A sign by a wide gateway advertised the museum devoted to the commandos – this was where they yomped to from Spean Bridge to earn their places on the course. I didn't check whether the museum was open; I had a long day's walking ahead, without much spare light at the end of the day.

A few flashy houses have been built along this road, with another one on the way. I was reminded of Soames Forsyte's much-anticipated new house in The Forsyte Saga, which I am re-reading. A Land Rover drove past, its trailer full of dead pheasant or grouse, hanging in rows from a frame. A car with a foreign number plate was in close attendance. Then a fleet of Range Rovery-type vehicles drove past me and pulled up at the side of the road. Men in fancy dress, with guns and dogs as accessories, emerged from the vehicles, while the man in charge swapped notes with a distant chum by radio.

At Clunes, the road turned left to head inland, while the GGW and I turned right on to a forestry track. As well as serving as a footpath, it's also a numbered cycleway on the national network (78, since you ask). This track runs for seven miles along or near the lochside, with a mostly-excellent surface for walking, the only exceptions being a few patches where stones have been tipped to fill holes or soggy hollows – very necessary, no doubt, but a trial to walk over.

Even apart from these bits, this is not an effortless saunter: the track undulates continuously, at one point reaching about 250 feet, a long way above the loch and well into the forestry plantation. How they harvest the trees is a mystery to me. Some of the felled areas seem to be on a one-in-one slope. A 4x4 vehicle drifted past, its driver the only sign of life I saw on the whole stretch, except for a large flock of small birds. They settled on the track, then flew up into the trees, down to the ground, always keeping just ahead of me. This display continued for five to ten minutes, and then they lost interest and went off to play another game.

Towards the end of Loch Lochy, the GGW splits to serve those intent on visiting Invergarry and those who want to visit Laggan and then walk up the East side of the next Loch, Loch Oich. I wanted to do a bit of both, so I turned right to walk the few yards to cross the Caledonian Canal at Laggan Lock in South Laggan.

I read somewhere that South Laggan is “famed for being the setting for the BBC series, the Monarch of the Glen”. The lock was built in the early part of the 19^th Century. The poet Southey visited in 1819, comparing the navvies to ants on an anthill as they completed the building work. The path I followed is alongside the canal which leads from the lock to the start of Loch Oich. I came across something I had not met before today – mud. But not much of it, easy to sidestep.

At North Laggan I crossed back over the canal on a swing bridge. From here to Invergarry it was back into the trees for a walk above Loch Oich, with the A82 between path and loch. This was another bit of forestry track, and it rose and fell even more than the one earlier in the day, at one point reaching 400 feet. I saw little of Invergarry itself at this stage, as I crossed the River Garry on a footbridge above the village, and turned up Glen Garry to find my b&b. Later I walked into Invergarry for my supper.

Near the centre of the vilage is the junction between the A82 road (from Inverness to Fort William) and the A87 road which branches off to the west towards Skye. This has long been an important junction. The village is probably best known for the nearby ruins of Invergarry Castle, situated on Creagan an Fhithich (the Raven's Rock), overlooking Loch Oich. The castle was the seat of the Chiefs of the Clan MacDonnell of Glengarry, a powerful branch of the Clan Donald. The castle's position was a strategic one in the days of clan warfare. It is not certain when the first structure was erected but there are at least two sites prior to the present castle. After raids by the Clan Mackenzie in 1602 which included the burning of Strome Castle, the MacDonalds of Glengarry fortified the rock. According to clan tradition, the castle was built with stones passed hand to hand by a chain of clansmen from the mountain Ben Tee. Yeah, right. During the Civil War Oliver Cromwell's troops under General Monck burned the castle down in 1654. Repaired, it was held for King James VII of Scotland from 1688 until its surrender to the Government forces of William and Mary in 1692. It was then held by the Jacobites during the 1715 uprising, but taken for the government in 1716. During the 1745 uprising it was again held by Jacobites and visited twice by Bonnie Prince Charlie, shortly after the raising of his Standard at Glenfinnan, and he is said to have rested there after his defeat at the Battle of Culloden, in 1746. In the aftermath of Culloden it was sacked and partially blown up by troops under "Butcher Cumberland" as part of his systematic suppression of the Highlands. Just the walls survive, which is hardly surprising after all that lot.