The waitress at our hotel told us that our walk yesterday is the toughest section of the West Highland Way, and today would be ‘a doddle’! I’m not sure I agree with her adjective, but I guess it is all relative! We climbed very steeply through woodland out of Crianlarich, on muddy paths after all the rain. Then as we emerged from the woods the sun appeared and continued to shine all day. We stopped for lunch at Tyndrum, and from there we were walking on General Wade’s Military Road for most of our walk. It is a wide track, winding through the hills and, apart from the streams rushing down the middle of the path, is indeed ‘a doddle’ to walk. But it was two very weary walkers who arrived at our accommodation in Bridge of Orchy: we are loving the amazing Scottish scenery, but looking forward to another rest day in three days time!

A Backward Glance

Today started with a steep climb up the path we descended yesterday off the West Highland Way to get to our lodgings in Crianlarich. Back on route we soon were treading part of what is termed a General Wade military road constructed about 300 years ago. It’s a wide stony path through increasingly mountainous terrain. Although the road carries the General’s name a lot of them can be attributed to his deputy Major Caulfeild or Thomas Telford who later improved on them. However, the real heroes must be the thousands of men pounding rocks all day to make the impossible possible (impassable passable). The path took us deep into the Tyndrum Hills but the beauty of the landscape harbours a history of ancient brutal conflict among neighbouring clans. Back in the day, Robert the Bruce’s soldiers and allies took a grim pasting from the MacDougall’s. Then two years later they had a return match at a place called Pass of Brander when Robert evened the score. Back then I think it’s fair to say, Scotland was not a very friendly place and tourism was severely frowned upon. Thankfully things are a bit better now. Our journey today also took us past the only gold mine in Scotland, the Cononish Gold Mine, which expects to extract around 57kg of gold this year, that’s less than five bars. The Bank of England has about 400,000 of them. The Bank of Scotland, like me, doesn’t have any – true wealth is inversely proportional to our desire for it.