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Published: August 13th 2012
The Sign
The Starting Point!Day two started with mean man Sam knocking on our door at 8:45 letting us know we were 15 minutes late to breakfast. So we start rushing around, girl style, and knock, knock, knock"! Mean man Sam is back, this time not happy at all!! On our way down, Lady Wheezy said she felt like she was at her parents house and was getting in trouble. The breakfast was fabulous though, and the rooms great, shower was good, but man, Mean Man Sam needs to take a chill pill. I would still recommend the place, just know what that rules are rules and not to be broken when visiting with mean man Sam at Lawriestone in Ft. William.
Off to walk we go, after stopping at a couple of souvenir shops and a grocery store, we find the sign telling us, we are beginning the 79 mile trek to Inverness. So cool!
Scotland has absolutely stunning countryside. The friendliest people around live here. Outside of (MMS) we haven't met anyone who didn't offer a smile, a sweet hello and some even offer a wee bit of dram!
On the way we meet some fabulous people, really cute dogs
5&5
Our first set of push up/Sit ups and even a gypsy family! After what seemed like hours and almost getting yelled at in Gaelic for playing on a live railroad, we find the famous Neptune's Staircase. The story is pretty cool, but I'll leave that to you to research. It is impressive! But very hard to get a good picture because of how it is layed out.
The next part of the walk is pretty cool. We follow the Caledonian Canal all the way to Gairlochy. The words to describe the scenery are very hard to find but the phrase "Once you visit Scotland, it will always be in your heart" pops in my head on more than one occasion. To keep us entertained on the walk, I have a mini speaker attached to my backpack and we're playing music from our iPads. (By the way, nice song choices EJ). We also try and come up with stupid games, like saying hello in a different accent or language every time we pass someone or my stupid idea of every time we stop, we have to do 5 push ups and 5 sit ups (which happened way more than I thought it would!!)
When we finally
hit our destination, or wait, what we thought was our destination, we are so excited! There are a couple of guys hanging out, maybe working, and we ask them to take our picture and I threw in the ask for a wee bit o'whiskey, but they just laughed at me, complimented our choice in music, and sent us on our way.
At this point we are at the beginning of Gairlochy but are staying in Spaen Bridge. Our dossier states that "Since this is a relatively easy section of the route, you may want to continue your walk into Spean Bridge, about 3 miles". We decide to walk and holy crap! I don't know who wrote the dossier but, easy it is not! It is all hill and more hill and then just a wee bit of hill for at least 2 miles. After lots of cussing, mumbling and pure hell, we hit the top of the hill and are rewarded with a beautiful WW2 war memorial, then downhill we go for the last mile or so of our journey. We decided the "easy part of the journey" on the dossier was referring to the canal walk, not the
walk to Spean Bridge, it was a killer!
We walk into our B&B for the night, Distant Hills (yes, it definitely was!!) and are greater by the awaiting, ever smiling, Paul. What a lovely man. We sign in and are showed to our rooms, given a menu for breakfast and our take away lunch and left alone. The room is awesome! We have a little amenity kit of hot chocolate, coffee, tea and the most amazing cookie, marshmallow, chocolate covered thing ever!
We check in and head to dinner at the Old Station Restaurant. On the way I talk the girls into ordering dessert first, something I always wanted to do, and they enthusiastically oblige. The dessert, 7 glasses of whiskey, 1 glass of wine, steak with peppercorn sauce and local salmon are amazing! A 6 thumbs up from all of us on this place! On the way home we stop at a little store and load up on those yummy marshmallow things and Ginger gets a Ginger Beer, which turned out to be really, really good! Back in the room, we shower and head to bed. Lady Alida, being the lady that she is, is treated to
her our suite this evening and Christine and I settle in for some much needed girl talk and a quick Skype with her man.
So tomorrow starts another day, Gairlochy to South Laggan. The story continues my friends...
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Robert Yniguez
You know that Sam is starting piss me off. Seven glasses of whiskey and a long hike, I bet you, wheezy and ninja slept good and woke up late. Good luck on day 2 hiking.