Morning!

Today was the day we’d been afraid of since we first heard about it. We had to climb the Devil’s Staircase! If that doens’t intimidate you, then.. you were not one of us. We got a pretty early start, being on the trail before 9am, which might not seem early, but I was proud of us. The entryway to the diabolical climb was our point of departure.

So we started to climb it.. and then.. we had climbed it! We totally dominated the Devil’s Staircase! It was cool!  From maybe 400 feet to 1800 ft.  And it took us maybe an hour or so. So we were pretty proud of that.   Unclear whether we are just awesome walkers or whether the staircase might have been over-hyped, but nonetheless…After conquering the climb we’d been worrying about for days, we felt.. tough!   So after that, we took our time. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate with our relaxed mood. It wasn’t rainy, exactly, but it was so foggy there were few reasons to stop and take pictures. We didn’t let that stop us from stopping, so there are plenty of pictures of what would, on other days, be really beautiful scenes.

The last leg of the trip consisted of following 6 giant hydroelectric water pipes down to the old aluminium smelting plant which is the town’s raison d’etre. IS that right? I usually hide from French words, but I’m sticking with that. After we got to town, we checked in, showered, and went to all the bars in town. 20 minutes later, we settled into our hotel for dinner, darts, drinks, and a generally peaceful evening.

We’re about to do our biggest / second-to-last day, from here to Fort William. Breakfast is served.

Today: smooth sailing. Wide trails, long, slow inclines, followed by long, slow declines. Giant valleys, beautiful rivers, dead deer, live deer. WE made pretty decent time, probably on account of the slowness of the altitude changes, it still felt good to be early. We couldn’t stay at the hotel at the end of the trail, so we had to get a cab over to a different hotel, and we got to call him and have him pick us up two hours early! Maybe we were too destination-oriented…

Lot of cool old bridges, but only a few photos of them, cause they’re probably boring to look at and I have nothing fun to say about them. We saw a family of deer at the hotel at the end of the trail, which was the first mammalian life we’d seen. That was exciting, but got even more exciting, as you’ll see.

Worst dinner I’ve had in ages, but the lunch was fantastic (ESS). Ephen Stephen. The hotel has a pool, which we all took advantage of, as well as fast internet, which has made these last three posts possible- last night’s place took about ten minutes to upload a photo. Whew! Anyhow, hard day tomorrow! Get pumped, Sutton!

So the Drovers Inn is where we stayed last night. IT’s super old, it’s haunted, it’s full of taxidermy. They serve vegetarian haggis (supposedly), the bathrooms are carpeted and on every other floor, and it has a fabulous whisky selection. Highly recommended! ****!

You guys, for the next few days, I’m going to pretty much just be walking with a group of dudes, complaining about bugs, and trying to not tell the same story a third time, so I’m not sure how much narrative these posts deserve. So I’m gonna be kinda rushed.

Anyhow, what’s important? Remember how we had to take a bus backwards the previous day? Well, the day started off with us going forwards in a bus back to where we’d started, which would have been really frightening if I’d been facing forwards in the van and could see where we were going and how fast, etc. Luckily, I Was sitting backwards, so I was just nauseous. Yike.

Anyhow, then we got out and we walked. And walked. Etc. It was pretty rough, and word on the street was that there were some trail washouts/kinda lame parts in the section following lunch, so some folks elected to take a boat and a bus to meet us at the hotel. So there’s something cool about walking everything you say you’re gonna walk, etc., but we’re already kinda cheating w/r/t to our taxi rides and lodging, so we’ve been pretty cool about looking to maximize our fun rather than maximize our agony. Anyhow, I elected to walk, which was fine, but I heard the boat ride was really great. So maybe next time there’s a chance to take a boat, I’ll take it. Alas, I did not take the boat ride, so these pictures are all on the trail.

So I just said there was no use for narrative, and then I go off on a big, boring narrative. Whatever. Walk walk walk. Then we got to our hotel, which was deemed best pub in all Scotland. In 1705. That place was cool; it deserves an entire post, which will follow.

Hey dudes! So even though I haven’t yet posted pictures from our days in Edinburgh, I wanted to skip ahead so I could let everyone (my mom) know what we’re up to as we’re up to it. So this is from earlier today, and then hopefully some time in the future I will get around to posting photos from Edinburgh, because Edinburgh is great!

So we left our hotel in Drymen this morning around 8:30. It was probably later than that, though, because I ten dot run late, and I was definitely the last person to show up outside. And then we started walking.

And we walked. We basically left the city and walked north, slowly approaching a giant hill which just got bigger and bigger. Optics. Eventually we were walking up that hill, and eventually we even got to the top of it. The weather was pretty great, with a light breeze and just enough cloud cover to keep us cool and bug-free. Being the first day, everyone was in pretty good shape and well rested, but also still in that early-hike mindset where you think it should only take you 5 minutes to walk a mile. So we’d look at the map every so often, and we were never as far along as we’d like, but it was awesome.

Around 12;30, after 7,8 miles and four hours of hiking (impressive pace, no?), we stopped for lunch. This is where things got pretty dark for me. With my vegetarian sandwich (basically a hot caprese) came some potato chips. I tasted them, and they tasted funny, so I asked a fellow hiker to try them and confirm they tasted like bacon. This was confirmed, but then the group quickly convinced me that there’s never any bacon in bacon-flavored stuff. So I ate them all, and was pretty well creeped out by it. Then, after I ate them (cause I’m a moron), I went to check the ingredients on the chips. When I found the bag, it bragged in giant letters how it was made with REAL ACTUAL LOCAL ORGANIC PORK! Fuck. So much for my veg-edge. But also not really a big deal. Still made me sad.

The afternoon walk was equally beautiful, though it didn’t have any of the awesome vistas of the morning, it was still nice. Loch Lomond, next to which we spent most of the morning walking, is beautiful, and warm enough to swim in. See the pictures below for evidence! Unfortunately, as the day went on, our estimates of how far we’d gone were inflated just as our actual pace slowed, so it seemed like we’d walked a thousand miles every time we moved forward ten steps. So that was frustrating, but eventually we got to our goal (Rowardennan!), where we got a beer.

Here’s the annoying part. (IT wasn’t a surprise, but it’s still annoying.) There weren’t enough hotel rooms in the town we’d walked to, so we had to stay in a different town. Not that big of a deal, except the place we were actually staying in was in the opposite direction from where we wanted to go. Also not that big of a deal, but it happened to be that we were staying at the exact same place we had lunch. So, after lunch and after 8 miles of up and down hiking, we got into a cab which took us to our hotel, exactly 8 miles back up the trail.

That’s where I am now, in the hotel bar, typing and drinking Auchentoshan, which is delicious, FYI. We just had a great dinner, especially teh part where my dad ordered dessert first, as is his style. He shared, and I sat next to him, so basically I won! Way to go, Brett! But I walked, in total, about 16 miles today, so I’m ready to go to bed. Photos and dumb captions, as ever, are below.

In Edinburgh, we all met at the train station. First class to Glasgow, cause we’re fancy, another train to somewhere.. like, Balloch or something. Taxi to our hotel, check-in, have snacks, enjoy the view, get ready for the next day. Hardly worth a post, truth be told, but there’s a few pretty pictures.

Man, I’ve been waiting to use that title for a long time. One of my biggest problems with the second largest city in Scotland is knowing how to pronounce it. I remember the spelling, I think, because there’s a city of a similar name in Texas, and one guy I met from there told me “It’s just like the city in Scotland, but with no H.” So easy enough. Pronunciation I couldn’t get a handle on, so I find workarounds.

Okay, so as I write this, it’s been a few weeks, so I’m a little vague on what happened, but basically we started off the day with a (forced?) march up Arthur’s Seat, which is basically a big hill next to a bigger hill right next to the city. It was a pleasant way to get started for our other walks coming up later. After we went up and down, we got beers, then walked a few hundred yards, then got some more beers! Card loading is what they call it in the business.

Unfortunately, we got to the castle too late to take the tour (they suggest taking two hours or more, we got there with maybe 30. Whoops.) I’ll have to go back to Edinburgh for sure, because I missed basically everything. Nonetheless, seems like a cool town!