Fifth day – back in the saddle
The plan to wrap up warm in our little cabin and fight off the illness we were both suffering yesterday seemed to have paid off this morning, since we both felt much better. The stage we had planned to walk was to be the longest yet though, at 32km (20mi), and given that we were certainly not yet feeling 100%, we decided to take a bus to Bridge of Orchy. This shortened the route down to more like 19km (12mi).
Once we got out of the bus and got going, I began to feel much better pretty quickly, although still a bit stiff and sore. I guess it must have been food poisoning, since I don’t know what else would leave you feeling so ill but be gone within 24 hours. Anyway, it was such a relief to be out in the open again and active.
Today turned out to be actually quite an easy walk, since the route from Bridge of Orchy across the edge of Rannoch Moor is pretty easy to walk on – it is mostly an old droving road along which sheep and cattle would have been taken to market in former times. It has also been one of the nicest days so far in terms of scenery, with the moor and the mountains offering a dramatic landscape of grey, green, and purple. It is not too difficult to imagine that this would all look not so different thousands of years ago, so empty and devoid of the impact of humans is it. The emptiness and the scale of the whole thing is quite difficult to grasp, and certainly does not come across in the photos here.
At the end of the day, we reached our camping spot next to the Kingshouse Hotel at the end of Glencoe. This famous glen gives an even more dramatic impression, disappearing into the mist and amazingly beautiful in the grey light of the evening sun.
