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white_hart) wrote2019-09-10 01:18 pm
white_hart) wrote2019-09-10 01:18 pm
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Walking: Fort William to Inverness via the Great Glen Way
For our holiday this year, we decided to pick up where we left off in Fort William and walk the Great Glen Way to Inverness, following the Caledonian Canal and the shores of Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and - for the whole of the second half of the walk - Loch Ness. There appears to be some confusion about how long the Way actually is, with some websites saying 79 miles and some saying 73; in total, we walked 74.75 miles as measured by Runkeeper, though that included some additional distance getting to and from our B&Bs and our finish was a couple of miles short of the "official" finish.
Looking at the weather forecast, it was clear from the start that we were not going to be as lucky with the weather as we were on the West Highland Way, and we left our B&B in Fort William in the pouring rain clad in head-to-toe waterproofs. By the time we got to the other end of the shopping precinct and popped into Tesco to buy sandwiches my lower legs were already feeling rather wetter than the legs of a person wearing waterproof trousers should have been, and suspecting that the seams of mine had sprung a leak I popped back up two doors to Mountain Warehouse to buy a new pair of waterproof trousers and left the old ones in a convenient litter-bin. (The new ones were also supposedly the right length, as opposed to the old ones which were a men's pair from Decathlon and were clearly designed for someone six inches taller than me, although in fact I found that they dragged on the ground a bit and I kept treading on the backs.)
Leaving the shopping precinct behind, we made our way round the shores of Loch Linnhe and across the mouth of the River Lochy to the Corpach sea-lock, at the south-western end of the Caledonian Canal. Some of this was along lochside paths which would have been pleasant if it hadn't been raining with a strong wind coming off the loch, and we crossed the Lochy by a bridge with a view of the ruins of Inverlochy Castle, but a lot of it was through dull suburban streets and on the whole it was a relief to arrive at Corpach. Once we'd turned northeast along the canal we also had the wind at our backs and it was quite a pleasant walk along the towpath to Gairlochy, passing the impressive Neptune's Staircase locks at Banavie and lots of rather muddy cyclists coming the other way to finish a race there.
Our accommodation was in Spean Bridge, about another four miles from Gairlochy along a B-road that was less quiet than we'd hoped, and we were quite pleased when, just as we were reaching the junction with the A82, a car pulled up and offered us a lift the rest of the way. Even better, it turned out to be the owner of our B&B, who'd been picking some other guests up from Gairlochy, so we were saved the last mile down a much busier road (albeit with a footpath).
It was raining again when we set out on the second day, and we were happy to accept a lift from the B&B owner back to the trail at Gairlochy, where the canal joins Loch Lochy. This stage follows the northern bank of the loch to Laggan Locks, leading to the highest section of canal which runs between Loch Lochy and Loch Oich; it's fairly low-level, running first through some delightful beechwoods and then, after a longish stretch of road walking, through conifer plantations. It would probably have been quite pleasant if the rain hadn't turned out to be several orders of magnitude wetter than the previous day's heavy rain. Having started at about 9am, by 11am the rain had started to soak through my waterproof jacket and trousers and when I stopped to get a snack out of my bag an hour or so later, reasoning that if I was cold and wet I should probably try to keep my blood sugar up as much as possible, when I lifted my arms to remove my backpack cold water streamed down the inside of my jacket. (It isn't an expensive jacket - Mountain Warehouse again, and I have increasingly found that their stuff tends towards "fashion" rather than "performance" - but it's always been perfectly adequate before now.) Every stream we crossed was in spate, and we couldn't get to the three-sided shelter marked on the map at a wild camping site where we'd planned to have our lunch because the stream crossing the beach was impassable. We were very relieved when we finally got to Laggan Locks and the end of the day's walk was in sight.
This was a shortish day (just over 13 miles with no siginificant climbs), so we were a bit early to check in to our B&B, but we we stopped for a drink at the Eagle (a pub on a converted Dutch barge moored just above the lock) while we waited. At this point, I would also have put on more layers, but I'd put my hoodie on when we stopped for lunch and it was now as sodden as everything else I was wearing, and when I tried to zip the bottoms back on my trousers (I'd been wearing them as shorts so I didn't overheat with waterproof trousers on as well) I discovered that the water had run down my back and collected in the bottom of the waterproof cover on my backpack, so the things at the bottom of the main compartment (including the bottoms of my trousers) were also wet. Happily, our B&B had a drying room, and we were met at the door by the two women who owned it who whisked all of our wet things away to dry them (including putting newspaper into our boots so they dried out properly) and showed us to our room where we were able to have hot showers and put on dry clothes and drink tea until we had properly warmed up.
The third day was one of the shorter ones (only 10.5 miles), and we had the best weather of the trip with actual blue skies and sunshine. This is the last flat stage of the walk; the last three all involve climbing up into the hills on the north side of Loch Ness. From Laggan, we walked along the short section of canal to the southern tip of Loch Oich, and then followed the route of the dismantled Spean Bridge to Fort Augustus railway along the southern shore of the Loch to Bridge of Oich, the half-way point of the stage, where the canal and the River Oich both leave the loch. (There is an alternative route to the north of Loch Oich, via Invergarry, but there didn't seem to be any particularly compelling reason to follow that.) The second half of the walk was back on the canal towpath, which follows a causeway between the canal and the river, descending via several locks to Fort Augustus and the final flight of locks down to Loch Ness.
The fourth section, from Fort Augustus to Invermoriston, was the shortest. One of our books said it was 8 miles and the other said 9.5, but in fact Runkeeper made it only 7.5. We did opt for the "high" route, which climbs from just above sea level in Fort Augustus to a high point of about 380m above the level of Loch Ness. There are supposed to be amazing views, and there probably would have been if it hadn't been, yet again, pouring with rain, with low clouds meaning that we could only see a misty distance where the loch should have been. It was also windy up on the hills, and the wind drove the rain at us with such force that, once again, we ended up soaked despite our waterproofs. Unfortunately, check-in at the B&B in Invermoriston was 4pm and because the walk was so short we arrived almost two hours early, and sat dripping in the bar of the Glenmoriston Arms surrounded by other soggy walkers, drinking pot after pot of tea in an attempt to warm up despite our wet clothes and generally feeling a bit demoralised.
Although it wasn't actually raining when we left Invermoriston there were clouds over the hills and rain on the forecast, and we decided to opt for the "low route" for the first few miles rather than the high route. Despite our guidebook's negativity, the low route turned out to be a good track through pleasant, mossy woods, and much less exposed when it did rain. The low route eventually climbs, reasonably steeply, to about 350m above sea level to meet the descending high route, and the combined route continued through woods before joining a quiet minor road for a couple of miles and then descending into Drumnadrochit. This was a longer stage, just under 14 miles, and the road-walking made it quite tiring, but at least we stayed dry and reasonably warm, and although the high route promised the best views of the whole trail the low cloud meant we wouldn't have been able to see them even if we had gone that way.
The last stage of the Great Glen Way climbs out of the glen and across the high moors to the north of Loch Ness. We climbed through woodland and had our last glimpse of Loch Ness late in the morning before heading across a purple-heather landscape with views of higher mountains on our left. We stopped for huge pots of tea and giant slices of lemon sponge cake at the Abriachan eco-cafe, an utterly delightful place based on what is apparently the highest inhabited croft in Britain, with rough wooden tables and chairs set among the trees and huge old silver teapots. The sun came out shortly before we reached it and it felt utterly magical. (Given that it clouded over again as we reached the road after leaving it, I'm really not ruling out it being actually magical, a side-step into a different, better world for half an hour.)
After Abriachan, there were a couple of miles of road-walking before we turned onto a track heading into woods and joined an old drovers' road from which we had our first glimpses of the Beauly Firth before arriving at a reservoir on a hill with views over Inverness. The trail goes right into the centre of Inverness, briefly rejoining the Caledonian Canal before following the River Ness to its official finish by the castle, but it's a long walk from Drumnadrochit to Inverness and when the point of a walking holiday is to spend as much time as possible in the middle of nowhere, ending by walking through a town or city, with tarmac beneath your boots and people going about their normal business, to work or the shops or out running, all around just feels anticlimactic. We'd done 16.5 miles already that day and even though it probably wouldn't have been as bad as the soggy squelch through the Fort William shopping precinct last year we decided to end our walk as soon as we hit the tarmac of Inverness, and called a taxi to take us to the B&B.
Overall, I think I preferred the Great Glen Way to the West Highland Way. The WHW was absolutely at the limits of our capacity as walkers, leaving us both feeling absolutely done in, whereas the GGW was well within our capabilities, and generally seemed to have better paths (the stoniness of so much of the WHW was a big part of what made it feel like such hard going), so that we still had enough energy left to enjoy the rest of our holiday (a day in Inverness and then a weekend in Glasgow), rather than just wanting to sleep. The GGW was also much, much quieter, with long periods where we didn't see anybody else, whereas the WHW is so popular that there was almost never a moment when we couldn't see at least a couple of other walkers ahead or behind us. However, as the trail itself goes through less sparsely populated areas we found better food along the way; on the WHW it was basically standard pub grub, and by the time we got to Fort William I was desperate for a dinner that didn't involve chips, whereas on the GGW there was a lot more choice and despite mostly sticking to my resolution to be pescetarian whenever I have a choice about what I eat (the exception being a slow-cooked lamb shank in Invermoriston, which was the only thing that seemed hearty enough when I'd spent the day being so cold and wet) I only had macaroni cheese and chips once. (Which is actually a little sad, as I do love macaroni cheese and chips and English pubs don't do it.) The weather did nearly defeat us (after getting soaked to the skin despite waterproofs a second time, I swore that if we had another day of heavy rain like that I was just going to get the bus; fortunately, the remaining two days were better), but you can't control the weather and people did keep telling us what an incredibly wet August they'd had (and even down in Glasgow the rivers were clearly very full).
Looking at the weather forecast, it was clear from the start that we were not going to be as lucky with the weather as we were on the West Highland Way, and we left our B&B in Fort William in the pouring rain clad in head-to-toe waterproofs. By the time we got to the other end of the shopping precinct and popped into Tesco to buy sandwiches my lower legs were already feeling rather wetter than the legs of a person wearing waterproof trousers should have been, and suspecting that the seams of mine had sprung a leak I popped back up two doors to Mountain Warehouse to buy a new pair of waterproof trousers and left the old ones in a convenient litter-bin. (The new ones were also supposedly the right length, as opposed to the old ones which were a men's pair from Decathlon and were clearly designed for someone six inches taller than me, although in fact I found that they dragged on the ground a bit and I kept treading on the backs.)
Leaving the shopping precinct behind, we made our way round the shores of Loch Linnhe and across the mouth of the River Lochy to the Corpach sea-lock, at the south-western end of the Caledonian Canal. Some of this was along lochside paths which would have been pleasant if it hadn't been raining with a strong wind coming off the loch, and we crossed the Lochy by a bridge with a view of the ruins of Inverlochy Castle, but a lot of it was through dull suburban streets and on the whole it was a relief to arrive at Corpach. Once we'd turned northeast along the canal we also had the wind at our backs and it was quite a pleasant walk along the towpath to Gairlochy, passing the impressive Neptune's Staircase locks at Banavie and lots of rather muddy cyclists coming the other way to finish a race there.
Our accommodation was in Spean Bridge, about another four miles from Gairlochy along a B-road that was less quiet than we'd hoped, and we were quite pleased when, just as we were reaching the junction with the A82, a car pulled up and offered us a lift the rest of the way. Even better, it turned out to be the owner of our B&B, who'd been picking some other guests up from Gairlochy, so we were saved the last mile down a much busier road (albeit with a footpath).
It was raining again when we set out on the second day, and we were happy to accept a lift from the B&B owner back to the trail at Gairlochy, where the canal joins Loch Lochy. This stage follows the northern bank of the loch to Laggan Locks, leading to the highest section of canal which runs between Loch Lochy and Loch Oich; it's fairly low-level, running first through some delightful beechwoods and then, after a longish stretch of road walking, through conifer plantations. It would probably have been quite pleasant if the rain hadn't turned out to be several orders of magnitude wetter than the previous day's heavy rain. Having started at about 9am, by 11am the rain had started to soak through my waterproof jacket and trousers and when I stopped to get a snack out of my bag an hour or so later, reasoning that if I was cold and wet I should probably try to keep my blood sugar up as much as possible, when I lifted my arms to remove my backpack cold water streamed down the inside of my jacket. (It isn't an expensive jacket - Mountain Warehouse again, and I have increasingly found that their stuff tends towards "fashion" rather than "performance" - but it's always been perfectly adequate before now.) Every stream we crossed was in spate, and we couldn't get to the three-sided shelter marked on the map at a wild camping site where we'd planned to have our lunch because the stream crossing the beach was impassable. We were very relieved when we finally got to Laggan Locks and the end of the day's walk was in sight.
This was a shortish day (just over 13 miles with no siginificant climbs), so we were a bit early to check in to our B&B, but we we stopped for a drink at the Eagle (a pub on a converted Dutch barge moored just above the lock) while we waited. At this point, I would also have put on more layers, but I'd put my hoodie on when we stopped for lunch and it was now as sodden as everything else I was wearing, and when I tried to zip the bottoms back on my trousers (I'd been wearing them as shorts so I didn't overheat with waterproof trousers on as well) I discovered that the water had run down my back and collected in the bottom of the waterproof cover on my backpack, so the things at the bottom of the main compartment (including the bottoms of my trousers) were also wet. Happily, our B&B had a drying room, and we were met at the door by the two women who owned it who whisked all of our wet things away to dry them (including putting newspaper into our boots so they dried out properly) and showed us to our room where we were able to have hot showers and put on dry clothes and drink tea until we had properly warmed up.
The third day was one of the shorter ones (only 10.5 miles), and we had the best weather of the trip with actual blue skies and sunshine. This is the last flat stage of the walk; the last three all involve climbing up into the hills on the north side of Loch Ness. From Laggan, we walked along the short section of canal to the southern tip of Loch Oich, and then followed the route of the dismantled Spean Bridge to Fort Augustus railway along the southern shore of the Loch to Bridge of Oich, the half-way point of the stage, where the canal and the River Oich both leave the loch. (There is an alternative route to the north of Loch Oich, via Invergarry, but there didn't seem to be any particularly compelling reason to follow that.) The second half of the walk was back on the canal towpath, which follows a causeway between the canal and the river, descending via several locks to Fort Augustus and the final flight of locks down to Loch Ness.
The fourth section, from Fort Augustus to Invermoriston, was the shortest. One of our books said it was 8 miles and the other said 9.5, but in fact Runkeeper made it only 7.5. We did opt for the "high" route, which climbs from just above sea level in Fort Augustus to a high point of about 380m above the level of Loch Ness. There are supposed to be amazing views, and there probably would have been if it hadn't been, yet again, pouring with rain, with low clouds meaning that we could only see a misty distance where the loch should have been. It was also windy up on the hills, and the wind drove the rain at us with such force that, once again, we ended up soaked despite our waterproofs. Unfortunately, check-in at the B&B in Invermoriston was 4pm and because the walk was so short we arrived almost two hours early, and sat dripping in the bar of the Glenmoriston Arms surrounded by other soggy walkers, drinking pot after pot of tea in an attempt to warm up despite our wet clothes and generally feeling a bit demoralised.
Although it wasn't actually raining when we left Invermoriston there were clouds over the hills and rain on the forecast, and we decided to opt for the "low route" for the first few miles rather than the high route. Despite our guidebook's negativity, the low route turned out to be a good track through pleasant, mossy woods, and much less exposed when it did rain. The low route eventually climbs, reasonably steeply, to about 350m above sea level to meet the descending high route, and the combined route continued through woods before joining a quiet minor road for a couple of miles and then descending into Drumnadrochit. This was a longer stage, just under 14 miles, and the road-walking made it quite tiring, but at least we stayed dry and reasonably warm, and although the high route promised the best views of the whole trail the low cloud meant we wouldn't have been able to see them even if we had gone that way.
The last stage of the Great Glen Way climbs out of the glen and across the high moors to the north of Loch Ness. We climbed through woodland and had our last glimpse of Loch Ness late in the morning before heading across a purple-heather landscape with views of higher mountains on our left. We stopped for huge pots of tea and giant slices of lemon sponge cake at the Abriachan eco-cafe, an utterly delightful place based on what is apparently the highest inhabited croft in Britain, with rough wooden tables and chairs set among the trees and huge old silver teapots. The sun came out shortly before we reached it and it felt utterly magical. (Given that it clouded over again as we reached the road after leaving it, I'm really not ruling out it being actually magical, a side-step into a different, better world for half an hour.)
After Abriachan, there were a couple of miles of road-walking before we turned onto a track heading into woods and joined an old drovers' road from which we had our first glimpses of the Beauly Firth before arriving at a reservoir on a hill with views over Inverness. The trail goes right into the centre of Inverness, briefly rejoining the Caledonian Canal before following the River Ness to its official finish by the castle, but it's a long walk from Drumnadrochit to Inverness and when the point of a walking holiday is to spend as much time as possible in the middle of nowhere, ending by walking through a town or city, with tarmac beneath your boots and people going about their normal business, to work or the shops or out running, all around just feels anticlimactic. We'd done 16.5 miles already that day and even though it probably wouldn't have been as bad as the soggy squelch through the Fort William shopping precinct last year we decided to end our walk as soon as we hit the tarmac of Inverness, and called a taxi to take us to the B&B.
Overall, I think I preferred the Great Glen Way to the West Highland Way. The WHW was absolutely at the limits of our capacity as walkers, leaving us both feeling absolutely done in, whereas the GGW was well within our capabilities, and generally seemed to have better paths (the stoniness of so much of the WHW was a big part of what made it feel like such hard going), so that we still had enough energy left to enjoy the rest of our holiday (a day in Inverness and then a weekend in Glasgow), rather than just wanting to sleep. The GGW was also much, much quieter, with long periods where we didn't see anybody else, whereas the WHW is so popular that there was almost never a moment when we couldn't see at least a couple of other walkers ahead or behind us. However, as the trail itself goes through less sparsely populated areas we found better food along the way; on the WHW it was basically standard pub grub, and by the time we got to Fort William I was desperate for a dinner that didn't involve chips, whereas on the GGW there was a lot more choice and despite mostly sticking to my resolution to be pescetarian whenever I have a choice about what I eat (the exception being a slow-cooked lamb shank in Invermoriston, which was the only thing that seemed hearty enough when I'd spent the day being so cold and wet) I only had macaroni cheese and chips once. (Which is actually a little sad, as I do love macaroni cheese and chips and English pubs don't do it.) The weather did nearly defeat us (after getting soaked to the skin despite waterproofs a second time, I swore that if we had another day of heavy rain like that I was just going to get the bus; fortunately, the remaining two days were better), but you can't control the weather and people did keep telling us what an incredibly wet August they'd had (and even down in Glasgow the rivers were clearly very full).