Friday, April 26, 2019

Day 5 - Garva Bridge to Fort Augustus

We made it to Fort Augustus yesterday at about 16:30. I was too tired and full to write an entry last night so I am doing it today instead.
We woke up yesterday morning to some very light drizzle. It looked like it might get worse but fortunately it stopped and we were able to pack up in relatively good conditions. We were pretty excited at the prospect of having a pub meal that night, but we were a little down after a tough day the day before. The road walking really took a toll on us. After a slow start we hit a bit of a groove through to Melgarve bothy. We stopped for a look and there were two gentlemen from Glasgow just getting their day started - Nick and Grant. Nick was having a very hard time getting Grant to wake up, so he was happy we were there to make some noise. Grant finally came down about 30 minutes later and couldn’t understand why we had all gotten up so early - it was already 10:15 at that point. Haha! We all had a great chat. They were in the area doing some climbing. We talked about tourism, the wind farms and hydro schemes, and somehow even Donald Trump - not the Scotts’ favourite person in the world! It was a nice break, and I appreciated getting their view on different things. After we left the bothy we started the climb over the Corrieyairack Pass, something Amanda and I did in a raging storm in 2017. This time it was sunny with clouds and a little wind. We had some tremendous views on the way up and down, and stopped for lunch about 15 minutes after we started the descent.

On The Way Down From Corrieyairack

The next nice bit was at the bottom along General Wade’s Military Road in the Culachy Forests. The trees were very unique and it was very beautiful.

Optical Illusion??

Our first view of Fort Augustus was exciting. We could almost taste the fish and chips!! It ended up being quite a bit further than we thought, but we finally walked into town around 16:30 and found our B&B for the night. The first showers after five days in the bush felt sooo good, and the fish and chips at the Lock Inn were well worth all of the hard work.

At The Locks After Dinner

We had a strategy session at dinner, and made some tough decisions. I am not ashamed to say that Scotland has gotten the better of us in this first five days of walking. As a result, we decided to try and get some healing in and skip the Fort Augustus to Cluanie leg. We are going to rejoin our route tomorrow afternoon where we would have been and see how we do the following three days before we hit civilization again. We took a bus to Fort William today to look for some new hiking shoes for Ben, in addition to a few other supplies. The rest is doing us some good I am sure, both physically and mentally. It was also cool to get to see Ben Nevis. We also re-evaluated our daily routine and have agreed to focus on a few more regular breaks with snacks throughout the hikes. Wish us luck. I hope that I have some good news to report in four days when we get a signal again.
I think that gets us back up to date. As always, I really appreciate the support we are getting from everybody reading the blog. Thank you all so much!! I’m off to bed now. Good night!

Route Details - The route was very straight-forward today. We continued West from Garva Bridge, past Melgarve bothy, and over the Corrieyairack Pass. From the North side of the pass we stayed on the General Wade’s Military road all the way to Fort Augustus passing through the burial ground on the way into town.

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