Day 9
Our penultimate hike. Left the Kingshouse Hotel a bit later than usual, about 9, since today was another shortish walk of about 9 miles. So no hurry. I have to say, yet another glorious day weather-wise. Sun-shiny, a bit breezy, partly cloudy, mid 40s, a beautiful day for walking. Started out pretty easy, but soon began the climb that led to the “devil’s staircase”. As we suspected, it really wasn’t all that bad. A nice steady climb, punctuated with pauses to look about us at the valleys below and the hills above. Absolutely stunning views. Once we reached the top, met up with that Dutch couple we’ve been seeing and Sebastian took our picture for us. Turned out real nice.
From there it was pretty much all down hill to Kinlochlevin. It was cool to see the trail miles ahead winding its way down the hillside. Eventually came into a nice forested area and then ran across the pipes used to feed water from a loch up above to a hydroelectric plant just outside of town. There were six parallel pipes running down the hillside, each at least three feet in diameter. They got to the plant and then fed back into the river from whence they came. Pretty impressive engineering.
That was right on the outskirts of town and when we got there it was a bit early so we stopped off at a pub for a drink and again ran into our Dutch friends. I feel bad right now, his name is Sebastian and I can’t for the life of me quite recall her name. It was very Dutch, I thought I had it, but now am not so sure. Darn it. I’ll have to ask her tomorrow. Anyway, we sat together and chatted for about an hour. It was really nice to share our various life experiences living in two different countries, but still ending up in the same place at the same time.
From there pretty normal evening. Check in, clean up, go have dinner, then relax and write a blog post. Tomorrow is our last day of hiking. 15 or so miles up to Fort William. Gonna be a long day especially after these last few short days. That’s ok, we can do it!
See you all tomorrow.
JIm