WHW - Day 2: Glen Nevis to Kinlochleven (12 miles)

We woke up to discover half an inch of ice on the outer wall of the tent, which explained why Kathleen, not being a fan of the cold, had a broken sleep. We later learned that it had been -7C during the night. We dressed, packed up and got brekkie sorted – porridge with sultanas and a couple of squares of Dairly Milk – yummy.

We set off to rejoin the West Highland Way [WHW] and almost immediately I made a navigational error that would have some serious consequences: instead of taking the WHW path, I turned onto a forest path which had very similar features to the correct path. This meant that we were blissfully unaware of the mistake and didn’t spot it until we were two hours down the road and scrambling up the side of a mountain. We had to turn back to the very start of the path which meant losing four hours of what would already be a very long day. There wasn’t much whistling and singing going on at this point. We plodded on and Kathleen, to her credit, didn’t give me too much abuse, even though her feet were aching and the first of her blisters had just begun to appear. Neither of us can give you a great account of the scenery that day as we got our heads down and adopted the motto of the French Foreign Legion that would become our rallying call at times of fatigue or despondency – "March or Die!". We also cannot show you many pictures as we discovered that I had left the memory card for the camera at home, doh!

And so it was that we arrived into Kinlochleven at 8:30pm, just as night was falling and with a very peculiar way of walking - think John Wayne with bad piles. We shuffled into the pub and got the key to the cabin round the back were we would be staying that evening. I went to dump our stuff while Kathleen got the beers and food in. The wee cabins at The MacDonald Hotel were fantastic and we were so glad that we didn’t have to set the tent up. I returned to the pub and drained my first pint in less than two minutes. We had a couple more to celebrate the end of a tortuous day then hobbled to bed.