TGOC'24 Day 1 Lochailort to Glenfinnan May 10, 2024

 Despite all the travel from the 36 hours, I slept super well on the top bunk and woke up really excited about the day. Andy and I were on the 8:20 train just outside our door over to Lochailort to start, but first we actually had time for a quick breakfast in the neighboring train car diner.

This is another lovely renovations and the food is really good. They also made a really good coffee. which I appreciated this morning. 

Sausage roll for me and we got it "to go" in case the train showed up early, but we had plenty of time to eat and get on the platform. 

The train station has a cute museum of the local area history (Glenfinnan is a very touristy area. It has always been beautiful, but the entire area has embraced the Harry Potter phenomenon, making the aqueduct and surrounding areas even more popular. It is also a stop on the very popular stream train (Harry Potter again)

Time to start

It is a very quick 20 minute train ride over to Lochailort and the train had a few more Challengers that were coming over to start here as well. 

As it turns out, I am glad I didn't stay at the hotel here. I heard later that they had major staffing issues and those challengers that arrived here, didn't get their breakfasts. The hotel was the official physical check out point for the Challenge, but I used What's App to sign out Andy and I, so we could go straight to the hills.

It was a fair walk along the A830 but it was a fabulous day, promising to be fairly hot but the scenery was great.  

Good to see the gorse blooming. 

Coming to the end of our road walk is the famous filming location of Dumbledore's coffin. It was punctuated with the smell of a rotting deer in the ditch by the road! 😦

As soon as we veered off the road walk I knew this day was going to be special. Hard, but special. There was no defined track anywhere. The scenery was stunning! Below you can see Dumbledore's island in the middle right as we climb. 

And we just climbing! This is the elevation profile for today. It is a lie! to be fair it is correct in a macro sense, but the ground undulates so severely and often that unless your contour lines were at 1 meter (3.2')  and not the normal 10m (32.8') you would never see just how variable and steep this ground is.

Here is a photo of Andy (can you spot him?) about to climb the next hill. 

The only thing that helped was that each time you reached the next false summit, the views just kept getting better. I also realized my legs were in better shape than I thought they would be.

Cresting that hill above and looking at the descent and then the climb up the next hill. 

What makes today even more challenging is, this is not what I imagined. Mentally I was prepared for a ridge line walk. The general description of today was the South Ridge of Loch Beoraid. That usually means you have a very big climb to the top and then a prolonged "flat-ish" walk along the ridge until you descend again at the end. Today is actually a "fence line" walk. The path we will follow is an ancient boundary line between two properties.  They were extremely diligent to not deviate from it!

Above is looking back at where we started, below is more undulating ground

Scotland remains the only place I know where the higher you go the wetter it gets.

These small and beautiful lochans dot the top of the hills. What you don't see is that the actual fence line cuts way down to the left edge of this lochan and then back up. 

What do you call it when you cut across pathless ground when your whole day is over pathless ground? 😆

We are just on the lip of being able to see Loch Beoraid (below). I suddenly heard what I thought was thunder and turned to see the first of two pairs of F22 Raptors enter the top of the loch and plunge down to do a low level mach run through the canyon. 

I managed to catch just one of the Raptors before it dropped below the rim on the South side that we were standing. 

Below you can see Andy, just to the right, of the old fence posts we used as a guide.

we are still going up.

more lovely lochans. I thought I would put the house here.

Looking back to the East and down on Loch Beoraid

Panorama of all of Loch Beoraid

Nothing on the elevation profile that would prepare you for the decent into this valley and then up the other side. 

I changed my mind, the house goes here. What a fantastic view.

Can you see the fence post in the left foreground of this photo? follow the line all the way straight down and you can see the fence line going straight up the far side. This was by far the steepest section.

Steep!

Finally over the top and looking at the way down. If you click on this image and look closely at the horizon, you will see just a hint of Ben Nevis all the way over in Ft. William

It didn't get any easier on the descent. This is coming down, but I am looking back up at Andy behind me. This was quite the strain on the knees and of course this section had the addition of being really boggy. 

Well we made it down and it was a little stretch on the A830 again back into Glenfinnan. What a lovely site was the Prince's House Hotel. We couldn't pass it up without going into the bar for a beer. Dinner reservations at 7 pm gave us some time to finish our beer and go back to the train car to clean up a bit and then return for a super dinner. At dinner I met Sue and John, who walk together, I will walk with them tomorrow. 

Below is today's route. Only about 13 miles, but these were certainly dog miles.

Special thanks does have to go to Andy today. I don't think I would have liked today as much as I did if I didn't have someone else there. One to tell me it was a "follow the fence post" route, but also to help with route finding. Despite Andy not being at his best physically this year, he is an expert at off-piste Scottish travel..... I really did love it!