Rat Race Run Britannia - Week 4, day 5 - Bridge of Orchy to Fort William

West Highland Way - day 3

Distance: 60.42km (total so far 1130.74km)

Total climb: 1733m (total so far 20,855m)

Steps: 75,128 (total so far 1,351,286)

This was the big day - further and far more climb than the day before. However, we'd been promised a drink at the end, which was going to make everything better. Hmmmm.

The first part of the day at least eased us into it - a mere 17k through Glencoe, a quick up and down to the Inveroran hotel followed by slowly gaining height. 

It was a moody weather day - occasional showers, but a strong cold wind. And the clouds never stopped glowering.

The path was also fairly unrelenting - it had been the old drovers' road through Glencoe to Fort William, and had originally been built by Thomas Telford. Specific care, apparently, had been taken to lay a layer of gravel such that the cattle's hooves would not be harmed. The same care, unfortunately, had not been taken in recent times with regard to runners' feet - the surface was all sharp rocks, and I was wishing I had my walking shoes with me, with which I could have just gone straight over the top. Unfortunately, all I had was my trail shoes, and I had to pick a path through as best I could. It wasn't particularly quick.

Just after feedstation 1, we were into a film location - there's a bit in the Bond film "Skyfall" where they head into the Highlands of Scotland, with some moody shots of dark valleys and cloud-shrouded hills. As we had been finding out, getting that sort of shot isn't difficult in Scotland, as its the normal state of things (if you ever wanted a shot of a sunny valley with a clear view, you'd be in more trouble). We passed the point where that shot had been taken - one assumes that Universal Pictures had the power to stop the traffic, which somewhat marred my attempt to take the same shot!

Due to the nature of the route, we'd been warned that there were a couple of sections where we needed to team up. That sometimes happened naturally anyway, but as it had turned out I'd done most of the previous day solo, so it was nice to team up with Bob for the first big climb of the day after feedstation 1. This was called the "Devil's Staircase", and it went up and up. It was another busy route with walkers, as its one of the highlights of the WHW.

Up and up we went, again working round the rocks, and handling the various switchbacks. There was a good view from the top, though.

The descent was less steep than the ascent, as it followed along the hill slowly descending on the road to Kinlochleven. Most of the WHW walkers were stopping there, and then doing the section from there to Fort William the following day - for us, it was called lunch.

There was an impressive hydro-electric power station at Kinlochleven, but it did look as if someone needed to tweak it with a spanner!

Lunch was at a school hall in Kinlochleven, and then we started up our second big climb of the day. Again, we were to be accompanied, but I caught up Andy in Kinlochleven so we were able to do the afternoon together. This took us into Glen Nevis, round the foothills of Ben Nevis itself, and so was a fairly continuous climb up after lunch.

Once we had done the initial climb, the route mostly followed the contour lines - and although the weather was still glowering in the distance, it only threw the occasional shower at us.

This one was genuinely feeling like a long day on top of a couple of harder days now, but we were onto the final descent into Fort William, with Ben Nevis to our right (or at least as much of it as we could see before it vanished into cloud). We passed a set of army trainees, which made us feel good (OK, they were carrying far more than we were, and we had no idea where they had come from that day, but hey, this old couple were still managing to go faster than the army!).

We could more or less see Fort William now, but it was one of those descents where the further you go along your destination still looks no closer. We were switching backwards and forwards along a forest road as we descended.

Finally we got to the end of the forest road, and turned left along the final road into Fort William. There was a group of eight Japanese walkers in matching T-shirts gathered round a monument on the left, celebrating completing the WHW - we helped then with a photo, and they did the same for us. 

This was the 'original' end to the WHW - some nice person had decided to move the new official ending a couple of km further into the town itself, because everyone who completes the WHW needs an extra mile to do. We knew that was the case, as our watches were adamant that there was still 1.5km to go, but it would have been nice if they had been wrong! Still, we did eventually complete our journey into Fort William and found the official new ending. Which was the end of a 60km day.

Song of the day: "Up where we belong" by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes (can't remember whether I've used that already. If so, its a good song and can probably cope with being played twice).

Last: West Highland Way - day 2

Next: The Caledonian Canal and the Great Glen Way