WHW Day 3: Rowardennan to Invreraman

Boots on, we hit the trail early.  Today the trail was reputed as tough: a rough, hilly path through the wilderness along Loch Lommond.  The end of the day should see us 14.5 miles further up the trail at the top of the Loch.  

First thing on, we spied some feral goats.  These are descendants of livestock that people were forced to abandon during the Highland Clearances, brutal aristocratic land grabs that forced thousands off their home and farms.

The forest were peaceful and quiet, and the terrain started to get more rugged.  We couldn't see Ben Lommond, the giant mountain that sits moodily over the lake, and I'm glad we decided not to spend the extra day for a climb as we would have a view of a cloud for most of the day.

 We went through a gate and entered Craigrostan Woods.

This was a magic place.  Due to the range of mountains that dropped down into this part of Loch Lommond, this rugged part of Scotland had some of the last old-growth forest in the UK.  Wise old oak trees clung to the steep slopes, moss and steeply undulating dirt path made for some serene walking.  I slowed down to take it all in- this is the kind of place that deserves a slow, quiet walk to take it all in.

There were lots of waterfalls and stream crossings on this bit of trail.

Also, Elvis.

He was doing various stunts for Cancer Research: skinny dipping in the Loch, donning blue suede hiking boots.  It was amusing as hell to hear Elvis speak with a thick Scots accent.

We came to Inversnaid, a hotel that marked the only sign of life on this trail.  The hotel had a view of a waterfall that had a nice deep swimming hole.  Someone decided to go for a swim.  That someone wasn't me.  Bry mustered up the courage to go for a quick dip.  Seriously- it took him longer to take off all his clothes then to get in and out of the pool with a great deal of bellowing.  The water here is on a different level of coldness, and even though the air was warm and muggy. an ice bath wasn't calling my name.

It was a nice place to stop for lunch though, and I watched dippers and grey wagtails hopping about the shoreline.

Back on the trail, we decided to take a detour up a RSBP side trail.  It ended up being a really strenuous climb.

Once we got to the top of the hill, we were rewarded with  a moody and dark view of the entire Loch, with no other people willing to spend the extra energy on the climb, we had the mountainside blissfully to ourselves.

That is Ben Lommond, obscured by a cloud in the top of the picture:

We rejoined the main trail and had several hours of good walking, seeing lots of critters along the way.

We stumbled upon a herd of red deer, on of the great symbols of the wild highlands.

After about five minutes of quietly sneaking up on them, I realized they weren't afraid of me at all.  In the end, I had to wave my arms and shout to get them to move off the trail, which they did reluctantly.

We also came across our first Bothy.  These are small, basic stone huts that are unlocked and free to use.  They have a fireplace and a couple of platforms to put your bedding on, and that's about it.  There's a whole network of them, and you can walk across Scotland taking advantage of free shelter if you wanted to.

We hit the end of Loch Lommond and began our climb into Inveraman.  We had been walking at such a leisurely pace that hikers who had started in Balmaha- seven miles further than we had walked- has caught up to us.  Spiritual old forest, a waterfall swim, lunch and bird watching and a climb for the view meant that it was getting dark by the time we neared our destination.  Everyone we met on the trail, and at the pub that night, complained about how hard the trail had been.  It was rocky and steep, but to me that is a trail.  I guess the fact that you could drive a truck down the rest of the West Highland Way meant the worst/best was behind us.

I kept nearly stepping on these tiny toads; there were dozens of them and they were so well camouflaged that you had to be really careful where you put your foot down.  

Really now.  You take a toad and make it tiny, and suddenly it becomes adorable.

We made our way into town, which consisted of a campground and a pub and a busy road.  After such a peaceful day of quiet walking, it felt kind of stressful.

Pied wagtail

In the end, we would have been better off at the campsite bunks.  The hotel, ancient and historic and filled with an impressive collection of creepy taxidermy creatures, seemed like it hadn't been renovated since the war.  It was reputed to be haunted, perhaps by an angry ghoul who will only rest when they decide to redecorate and toss all the moth-eaten bits of kilt into a rubbish heap.   While the low-ceiling dark pub was a unique and cozy place for a post-walk refuel, it just seemed like a sad and overpriced relic being held together with spit and paper.  

Oh, and tell me: since when is Rob Roy the judge of all things quality?  The man hid out in a cave for christsakes.  

I have found though- I can sleep through hauntings and drafts and creaks and groans after a long walk and a dram.

Hadrian's Wall day 1: The Adventure Needs to Start Somewhere

YOU GUYS!  I have just returned from an adventure!

For whatever reason, certain old relics of the Roman Empire have pulled me towards them.  The Aya Sofia, the Pont du Gard, various ruins in Africa and the Mideast, not to mention all of the good stuff in Italy.  

But the wall that Hadrian built...well, that's just special.  The idea was to put a firm barrier between the end of the Roman empire and the barbarian tribes of the North.  The narrowest part of what is now England became a huge military zone as legions of soldiers constructed this enormous wall stretching from sea to sea over 86 miles.  It was well-fortified, with forts and milecastles and manned turrets keeping a watchful eye to the lonely north.  Somehow, this only took six years to build, and considering that it was 10-20 feet wide and 11 feet high, with taller structures spaced out evenly along the wall, I stand impressed.  It takes me a year to make a pair of socks sometimes.    

By AD 410, Rome had started to collapse.  The northern frontier was abandoned, and the enormous wall was scavenged for building material over the centuries, knocked down to make way for roads, and cleared away for easier passage to the now-civilized North.

Today, parts of the wall still stands, bravely, against the elements.  Its surrounded by houses and towns and castles built with recycled wall stone.  It's a well-trodden National Trail that you can follow across England, and a UNESCO site.

I decided I was going to walk this trail.  

At first, my plan was to walk the entire thing from coast to coast.  After doing some research, I dropped that idea in favor for just walking the middle section.  Here, the wall remains more intact, the countryside wilder.  Lopping off the two big cities at the ends saves a couple days of having to walk through urbananity: Carlisle and Newcastle, neither have ever been mistaken for being "The Paris of the North".  Kind of cheating, but I really dislike roadside hiking, and I'd rather get right to the good stuff.

 

I hemmed and hawed and planned my route with some web resources and an OS map.  I decided to plan the trip from West to East as to have the wind at our backs- its much easier to have the rain pelting your backside then bearing the brunt of it with your eyes peering out under your hood, and it can be exausting walking for days head-on with the wind.  

We started out taking the train from London to Newcastle.  This would have been fine except everyone and their mothers was trying to get up North to Leeds to catch the start of the Tour de France.  Thanks, France.  Three hours on a cramped, airless, body-odor sealed tube did not a happy camper make.  It seemed like everywhere you turned, there was an elbow to knock into.

Once we hit Newcastle; cool damp bliss. We hopped a local train another hour and a half to the town of Haltwhistle, on the Cumbria Northumberland border.

This is a former mining area, with rows and rows of houses, built kissing-close and identical, yet surrounded by countryside.

Our first night was in the tiny hamlet of Greenhead, and we used the OS map to connect footpaths to stay off the main roads as much as possible to get there.

We were also very close the the Cheviot region, and there were lots of Cheviot sheep to be seen, along with Leicester Longwools, Dales, Blackface and Blueface Leicesters.

And there were birds!  I saw a spectacular amount of birds.  Oddly enough, not a single bird of prey, but pretty much everything else.

Oystercatcher

The skies were so moody and dark, and it had given us a good soaking off and on all afternoon, but never so menacing that it wasn't enjoyable.  

Even the horses wear Macs here...

Once again, I was amazed at just how lovely the countryside is here.  Never as dramatic as Switzerland, but just bucolic and postcard-pretty.

It was a lonely walk.  We saw no one except a couple passing motorist the entirety of the 6 mile amble.  It's always amazing that in a tiny country of 53 million, you can walk for hours and not see a soul.

Lapwings

We ended up taking a round-about way on public bridleways and joined up with the Hadrian's wall trail for a bit.  After that hellish first train ride, I was more than happy to stretch my legs and get a couple of hills in.  In the distance, the ridgeline with the remaining bits off wall stretching across the top.

Most of what remains in parts of the wall from this place onward is a large ditch that was dug for extra defense, and sometimes, nothing remained at all as years of road building and human activity tamped out any remaining trace of it.  In the distance, you can see the tiny hamlet of Greenhead: a neat cluster of former miner's homes.  There were many, many cows who stupidly watched us pass, and one enormous bull.  They don't seem to care at all that we are nearby, but perhaps all the ultra-aggressive bulls I've seen in Arles and beyond always makes me a bit jittery to be walking right past one in such an open area.  

 

Moo.

The ditch that some very determined Romans dug

 The accommodations in this part of England are slim, taking some advance planning to secure a room within walking distance of the trail.  There is a Hadrian's Wall bus that flits around from site to site along the wall, but they seem to be timetabled very wrong for everything I needed it for.  Walking it would be.

Thankfully, Nigel at the Four Wynds was friendly and accommodating and knowledgeable about the area, and happy to give us the low-down on prehistory Avalonia to the Romans to the coal industry, all the way up to the nearby rocket building site nearby.

I can imagine this being a very cold, dark and tiring place in January.  But on a breezy cool day in early July, I couldn't imagine anyplace finer.  We dropped our bags and headed another mile down the road to the only pub in town for a cozy pint and eat-it-and-like-it-or-else sort of food.