West Highland Way, Day 7: Crossing the Rannoch Moor

The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moor fowl and the pewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point.

- David Balfour and Alan Brech crossing the Rannoch Moor, 1751, in Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped

What a difference a day makes with this moody Scottish weather. Yesterday was dry, this morning cold, rainy, and windy, and I am excited. I have been looking forward to crossing the Rannoch ever since the kilted Mr. Montgomery in the Glasgow cathedral told me about this boggy moor with remnants of an ice age forest. Today we get to cross ten miles of this wild and desolate moor in the rain and wind, what more could a person want in life? Our guide books warn there is "no help or shelter" in the Moor. My mind's eye envisions Colin Firth riding toward us from the distance, black great coat billowing out behind, offering a hand up on his mount.

We left the comfort of our inn and skirted the west end of Lake Tulla, past campers who spent the night in a sloggy field, silently feeling grateful for our warm, dry bed the night before. We ascended on drove track through forest to the saddle in the Black Mount, that stretch of mountains that edges the moor from Glen Orchy to Glen Coe in the north, and onto the high plateau of the Rannoch Moor.


We were in one of the wildest places in Scotland, created 20,000 years ago by a glacier moving toward the east and on retreat leaving behind boulders, lochs,


hundreds of these little lochans, and a region inhospitable to humans.




Strange rivers seemed to flow from nowhere to nowhere.


I could understand why Sir Walter Scott called the MacGregors of this area "children of the mist".


It was off and on driving rain, mostly on, and only occasionally could I pull my camera out of my jacket. The reader will recall my Gore Tex boots were history left behind in Tyndrum, and my light hikers were soaked through to the metatarsals. I wore only a light hiking shirt under my rain jacket. Where was my brain when I got up this morning? Probably on Colin Firth. During one break in the rain, I turned to snap a shot of Kathleen with that ever present smile and her comments when passing by of "lovin' it".


Finding a lunch spot was not easy task. We had a choice between one exposed spot or another exposed spot, finally settling on one of those gigantic boulders dropped off by the glacier. We had walked separately most of the day. The isolation of the moor and the brooding weather were conducive to introspection and I was overwhelmed with this experience of walking one of the wonders of the earth in this perfect weather.


A couple miles from our destination Buachaille Etive Mor ("the great herdsman of Etive"), the most photographed mountain in Scotland, loomed into view.


For a short time, the weather cleared and the beautiful colors of the moor and mountain shone through.




Here is an incredible picture of the Buachaille (pronounced "Boochall", the 'ch' as in Loch) in winter.

The mountain stands guard at the junction of Glen Etive and Glen Coe and our Inn for the night sits close to the base. Kingshouse was built in the 1600's and got its name from the days after Culloden when the Duke of Cumberland used the building as barracks for his soldiers while they captured or killed any remaining Jacobites in the Highlands. I definitely did not get good vibes from this place even though the view from a lounge window is listed as one of the ten most beautiful in the world, up there with Victoria Falls.


Glen Coe extends east from our inn and I had hoped to make a visit to the beautiful valley and walk the land of the Glen Coe massacre in 1692. Thirty eight MacDonald clansmen were murdered by government soldiers under the command of a Campbell after extending their Highlander hospitality.

The visit to Glencoe would have to come another time. The weather wasn't going to let us have more sunshine and by the time we reached the Kingshouse we were in another downpour. Even so, Sally went out and walked another 2-3 miles after Jan, Kathleen and I settled in, content to take in the view out the window. That woman was on another level from us mortal walkers. Just as a warm up for the trip she had walked a 36 mile day hike - yes, day hike - in Washington mountains.


Tomorrow, we climb the Devil's Staircase.

West Highland Way, Day 6: Inveroran, A Place of Real Escape

We stocked up on lunch food at the Green Welly Shop in Tyndrum before setting off to the north through the Bridge of Orchy to Inveroran (not to be confused with Inverarnan), ten miles today but it will be three days before we come to a grocery again. We preferred to supply ourselves with cheese, crackers and fruit to eat on the trail rather than traditional lunch food. Kathleen and I had some differences about the tasteless crackers she liked, but I would count that as one of our greatest differences. Our clutch of ladies is getting on well, all mavericks that we were.

Our morning walking traversed the slopes of a munro, Ben Dorain at 3524', and a wannabe munro, Ben Odhar at 2948". I could relate to Odhar. Not so long ago, he probably met the 3000' requirement for a munro and now he was just a sub-munro. I used to be 5'4 and a half inches, now I'm 5'3 and a half.

These guys are conic mountains of volcanic origin, truly beautiful structural shapes. The big guy in the distance is Ben Dorain.


The flanks of our Bens were grazed by herds of sheep and Highland Cattle, an ancient Scottish breed that survives, even thrives under harsh conditions, much like the Highlanders themselves.


Beats me how they see past that mop top, but it must serve some survival purpose. They all seem to have the same hairdresser.


This sharp horned guy was pretty intimidating, but fortunately they seemed to be pretty even tempered animals as we had some up close and personal encounters.


In the fields just before Bridge of Orchy we came across either an antique piece of farm equipment or field sculpture. I couldn't decide which, but it looked the part.


We stopped to chat with a couple come out from the city to tend an elderly mother's house and garden, in her 80's she was and not wanting to move away from her home. I was in love with the shed. It had seen its share of hard weather, probably like its owner. It had a distressed look in furniture parlance, but naturally come by.


The hamlet of Bridge of Orchy was named after the bridge over the River Orchy built in 1751 by the government, again part of the transport project for control of those pesky Highlanders. Guide books referred to the "famous" Bridge of Orchy but I couldn't figure for what it was famous. Nothing significant happened here, no one famous lived here or did anything here. Just this beautiful old bridge, good for river watching. One of the best white water rivers in Scotland.




We lingered lunch beside the river.


As we headed up and out of Glen Orchy, I turned for a glimpse back at this peaceful little spot. I find myself doing that more often these days, at an age I know the probability I'll be back this way again is pretty small.


We crossed through a pine forest, hillsides covered with heather,


emerged onto open mountain on Mam Carraigh and scrambled up to a little cairn* to what one of Sally's guidebooks touted as the most beautiful view in Scotland, a panorama impossible to capture with a single shot, looking out over mountains, heather covered hillsides, sky, and water. Pure tranquility, and clear weather to view it all, pretty chancy in this part of Scotland, or all of Scotland for that matter.
*cairn = from Gaelic carn, a mound of stones piled up as a memorial or marker.


Looking northeast over Loch Tulla, I could see our route tomorrow crossing the small col* between Ben Toaig and Meall Beag onto Rannoch Moor, and my heart rate went up a bit. Our map and guidebooks cautioned there is no escape route or shelter crossing the moor, you are on your own, the weather is notoriously cruel, don't step off the track into the bog. Hm-m-m, just my kind of place.
*Col = a pass between mountain peaks or a break in a ridge


We hung out on our cairn a good long while with this landscape candy,


before taking the path down the mountain to Inveroran where our inn is the whole of the town.


We continued our lingering on a stone wall just a few yards from the door of the inn, as usual not wanting our walking to come to an end for the day.


The Inveroran Hotel is a rambling, narrow staired inn with eight rooms, blessedly in the middle of nowhere. The inn has been here since 1703 and, remote as it is, has had guests the likes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, and the great Gaelic poet Duncan Ban Macintyre who was born just down the way on the shores of Loch Tulla. The Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh writes this description of his visits to the area.

I wondered whether funky Highlander Black Watch carpeted the floors when those famous guys stayed here.


Our room faced out toward Loch Tulla,


and after leaving my bag in the room I took a walk back outdoors, catching these red deer in the back field.


Later we all took a walk - just couldn't keep off our feet - and watched the muted colors of afternoon fade into the shadows of sunset.


Tomorrow, crossing the Rannoch Moor.

West Highland Way, Day 5: Glens, Straths, Kirks, and Lachans

My shoe duct-taped up, we struck out into the heart of the Highlands toward Tyndrum. We have a good twelve mile walk today, the first six miles winding through beautiful Glen Falloch,


following the river toward Crianlarich, spectacular gorges and waterfalls on either side.


I had to give up on the shoes a couple miles along the trail and change into my reserve pair of trail hikers. The duct tape had shredded. At least I had a back up pair of walkable shoes - I learned that lesson crossing the Salkantay in the Andes wearing Mary Janes. Thank God it wasn't raining because my spare pair wasn't Gore Tex. Indeed, they were pretty permeable and crossing those streams was rather dicey not to mention the lack of ankle support jumping across the rocks.

We had to share our glen with railroad tracks and the A82. Before I moved to California I always said I would never preface highways with "the", but then I thought I would never "do lunch" either. By now our path was following an old military road built by the English after the '45 to transport troops.

Once we turned northwest away from Crainlarich we were well into forest. We were in no hurry to finish our 12 miles, what with six foot foxglove,


a fairy forest, and no signs of civilization.


Sally had a way of finding a spot for a few minutes of reading all along the Way.


We descended out of the forest into the pastoral valley of Strath Fillan, looking for the ruins of a 13th century kirk.


For the reader, a strath is a wide, flat river valley, a glen is a narrower, deeper, secluded valley, and a kirk is a Scottish church.

We found St. Fillin's Priory in a small grove of trees, just a remnant of what was once a magnificent building restored by Robert the Bruce in 1317. St. Fillan walked and taught the Christian way in this valley in the 8th century. The Bruce carried one of the priest's arm bones into the Battle of Bannochburn and restored this monastery in gratitude for his victory.

On a knoll next to the priory we found the cemetery of a Celtic church dating back to the 8th century.


St. Fillan was the patron saint of the mentally ill. A path down to the River Fillan took us to the Fillan's Holy Pool. Until the 18th century people thought to be insane were dunked in the pool, then left overnight strapped to a bench in the priory. If the bonds were loose in the morning, they were cured! An early version of our seclusion and restraint!

We had only three more miles into Tyndrum, but we were walking history here.


This is the story. Robert the Bruce and his guys, just defeated at the Battle of Methven, came to the priory in 1306 seeking sanctuary. Seems that Alistar MacDougall was a little pissed off that The Bruce had killed his father-in-law in the Greyfriar's Kirk a few months earlier and tracked The Bruce here to St. Fillan's. A battle ensued in a nearby field, now known as Dal Righ (the King's Field) and things didn't go well for the outnumbered Bruce side. As the guys fled east, Bruce covered the retreat of his men by bringing up the rear, killed three men who attacked him at the same time, and the MacDougall Highlanders backed off when they saw this. During the skirmish, though, he lost his cloak and magnificent brooch, still kept today at a MacDougall castle. A few yards from where Bruce killed his assailants he threw his sword and stuff into this little lake called Lachan nan Arm (Lake of the Arms) in order to more quickly flee with his men.
* a lachan is a little lake, this one glacier made.




We had begun to develop a habit of lingering on the last bit of trail at the end of the day, especially a nice day weather wise as this one. That's not to say it wasn't a little wet off and on, just no downpours. Finally, we relent and walk into town.


Being at the junction of several glens, Tyndrum has some history itself, dating back to the days of drovers and their cattle staying here on their way to markets in central Scotland. Rob Roy made one of his escapes from government soldiers by sneaking out a back window of The Old Village Inn while his pursuers were coming in the front door.

Just to the west lies Glen Strae, home to the MacGregor family from the 9th century until they were annihilated in the 18th century. One of our grandfathers times many greats, Sir Parker Steele, came to Glen Strae in the 1600's and had a son born here, Alexander, who died before his son, Reuben, our immigrant, could be born. Alexander, I'm sure, would have come through Tyndrum. Did he stop for a mug of ale? Was he hanging out with Rob? Did he leave the glen when the Campbells hunted down and murdered the MacGregor chiefs? Where is that time machine when you need one?

Tomorrow, we go to the best view in Scotland.

Seventy Thousand in Forty Five Seconds

May 31, 1970. A powerful, 7.7 Richter earthquake in central Peru killed 70,000 people. Ten thousand were killed in the town of Huaraz, climbing center for Huascaran, the highest mountain in Peru at 22,000 feet, and the town was reduced to rubble. In the town of Yungay, a few miles north of Huaraz, all 18,000 inhabitants were killed when a huge piece of ice broke from the top of Huascaran and created a massive ice and mud slide traveling at 150 miles per hour. Only the 300 children away on a field trip to a circus survived.


The only surviving structure was the front of the church which stood on the central plaza, and still stands in the memorial park with the beautiful Huascaran in the distance.


Tragedy on an unimaginable scale. Sometimes Mother Nature isn't so motherly.

West Highland Way, Day 4: In the Footsteps of Rob Roy

Today would be our roughest walking, 14 miles to Inverarnan beyond the northern end of the lake, over rocky outcrops, boulders, rubble, and streams through some of the most beautiful scenery on earth with Highlands rising on both sides of the glacier gouged lake. It is wild country through the forest, silent other than the lake lapping at the shore below our craggy path.




We had been able to accumulate enough food along the way to have our usual picnic lunch at Inversnaid, not much here except a coach tour hotel which we avoided.


The afternoon walking was even more rugged than the morning through old forest,


but about a mile north of lunch we came to a spot I had been anticipating, as my walking buddies could tell you. Aside from having to put up with my renditions of "Oh, Flower of Scotland" they had to endure listening to me go on about Rob Roy MacGregor. The guy is either a Scottish hero or a cattle thief, but if you have watched Liam Neeson in the Rob Roy movie how could you not see him as a hero. So when we came to the spot of Rob Roy's cave, one of his hideaways at shore's edge, I was coaxed to have my picture taken.


Rob Roy actually went by his mother's name, Campbell, as use of the MacGregor name was abolished for over 170 years after the battle of Glen Fruin in 1603 in which the outnumbered MacGregors whupped the butts of the Colquhoun clan.

The Scottish Parliament in 1617 declared,

"...the name of MacGregor should be abolished and that the whole persons of that name should renounce their name and take some other name and that they nor none of their name and that they nor none of their posterity should call themselves Gregor or MacGregor under pain of death .... that any person or persons of the said clan who has already renounced their names or hereafter shall renounce their names or if any of their children or posterity shall at any time hereafter assume or take to themselves the name of Gregor or MacGregor ....that every such person or persons assuming or taking to themselves the said name .... shall incur the pain of death which pain shall be executed upon them without favour."

Family legend and The Gathering of the Clan by Carl Steele claim Alexander Steele, one of our grandfathers with five greats prefixed, was chief of the MacGregor clan, elected in 1714. He was born in Glen Strae where a branch of the MacGregors were concentrated and could have been a MacGregor using the name Steele since the MacGregor name was banned. All other evidence, however, does not support this family contention but rather that he was the son and grandson of English knights. How an English knight ended up Glen Strae - it must have been a pretty miserable place given the condition and status of the MacGregors at the time - is anyone's guess. He certainly would have hobnobbed with the MacGregors and was the same age as Rob Roy so I'd like to think they hung out together.

The loch was beginning to narrow and we realized we would soon be leaving it behind.


Climbing past the tip of the lake we could look back and see the beautiful little Island I Vow, or Eilean a' Bhò in Gaelic, where the MacFarland clan once had a castle stronghold.


We took a few minutes to say goodbye to the Loch,


and turned north to Inverarnan and our night's lodging at Drover's Inn, here since 1705 on an old drove road.


A sign in the room warned about the Scottish midges and in the bar "No Bloody Swearing". Waiters in kilts, my favorite beer in the whole world, another tasty dinner following a 14 mile walk along Loch Lomond.

Contentment, except that just at the end of the rough part of the walk my left shoe sole began flapping. I've borrowed some duct tape from the innkeeper. Let's hope it works.