Amazing waterfalls, a famous canal and a tale of two toasters

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Monday 29 June. The day started as it finished the night before with fine rain and low cloud hovering over the water of Loch Linnhe. Undeterred we had a plan and set off to drive the 8 miles to Fort William. Within one mile we were held up in a traffic jam due to work to clea dnmake safe a landslide. Once clear of that we drove to Neptune’s Platform just outside of Fort William.
This is where the famous locks on the Caledonian Canal which link Loch Ness to Loch Linnhe and in effect enable a passage between the east seaboard of Scotland to the western. Built by Thomas
Telford it is a quarter of a mile long structure made entirely of brick and concrete and consisting of 8 locks which drop in total 19 metres from top to bottom. It is manned by a team who open
up in turn each of the locks to enable boats to travel up or down the canal. Passage through is based on the length of the boat and is £19 per metre.

We were fortunate enough to watch two large yachts make their way through the locks as well as an authentic tall ship called La Grace and that was a site to behold (see pictures). After spending about 90 minutes there we took a pub lunch after which the weather brightened up enough for us to move on first to buy a toaster at Argos (as our 30 year old one which we had in Nailsea had finally re fused (sorry) to work any more) and then to the second stage which was a canyon walk up to Steall Falls at the head of Glen Nevis. This rated on trip Adviser as no. 2 of the best activities around here (no. 1 being Ben Nevis). The reviews indicated a 90 minute walk up a reasonable rocky footpath with occasional scramble over streams and short difficult climbs. We took good footwear and a head for heights.
Having negotiated a single track rollercoaster of a road we eventually got as far as we could by car and started up the climb. It was tricky in places but manageable and the arrival at the top was nothing less than spectacular. A huge cascading waterfall onto a plateau that took the water in a meandering direction before it started another descent down a series of ravines and gulleys containing massive granite boulders that were swept down by the moving ice when this whole area was a glacier. We spent about an hour there before starting back down and we made the descent in good time despite the some challenging crossings.

From here we headed back to Fort William past the caravan site that we stayed at in 1995 (remember that Ryan – you were 13 then and we played golf at Fort William Golf Club?)

During a shop at Morrisons, we found a toaster at half price and a lot cheaper than the one purchased earlier in the day so after topping up with fuel it was back around the corner to Argos to seek an embarrassing refund before heading back to the site just as it was just starting to rain again. Tired but very satisfied with our day and exertions.

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