“Good weather today, aye?!” A cheerful chap said while tapping his hat.
When a Scot says that I never know if he’s joking or not. True, it wasn’t raining for a solid 5 minutes, but fact is that once I entered the Glencoe Independent Hostel about 1,5 miles down the road I was soaked until my underwear.
No matter how much the weather prevents you from loving Scotland unconditionally, itdoes give you that precious natural spectacle you can hardly find anywhere else in the world, that raw and that pure.
And that was the exact reason why I went to the Glencoe region in the Scottish Highlands. I even allowed myself to take a bus to not lose a valuable day of hiking time trying to hitch rides, because this time my travels were within a certain time schedule (and that sucks by the way, how you guys do that?). Ridiculous transport prices aside (£22,50 for 2,5 hours), I intensely enjoyed the scenic spin circling around Loch Lomond and cutting straight through the rugged terrain of the highlands, a bright full rainbow marking my welcome.
I quickly tried to dry my socks above the open fire, in vain, as even though I recently bought an entirely new outdoor outfit I figured out soon enough that my used-to-be-goretex-shoes had lost their layer… and this is the country where you find out such things. I decided to just embrace the rain and dive right into it trying to ascend the peak of Pap Glencoe.
While the downpour had intensified so fiercely I could hardly see my hand if I stuck it out in front of me, I tried to slide my way up along the trail that had turned into a rather convincing river, forcing me to wander ankle deep into the stream. Every now and then I stopped to quickly wonder why I do this voluntarily under the flag of ‘holiday fun’, but then I pushed myself further with the reassuring thought it couldn’t get any worse… until I glided of a slippery stone and gave myself another giant pink-purple tattoo to add to the collection.
Paper maps. Not recommendable with Scottish weather.
That said, the way back was an even bigger shitshow, me trying to survive in this mudslide by grabbing the plants and branches at both sides of the trail in order to come down with all my bones in their original state.
Now, if you ask to yourself why I punish myself like that. I got the answer for you in a few pictures, my friend:
Plus, life treated me on a few rounds of blackberries, flourishing in the wild like there was no end to it. Scotland might be incomprehensibly expensive, at least being healthy is free!
If you avoid any of these, so to say. Yeah, they’re not a myth. Unfortunately.
While I entertained myself with nothing in particular until 2AM (don’t expect Wi-Fi at this remote corner of the world), the rest of the hikers were under the wool at around 10PM to leave for their treks at around 6-7AM. Even though I could clearly be categorized as one of them, I never really fitted in that hiker-category. If the valid argument to leave early is that “there’s no one on the trail”, then that doesn’t really stand up if everyone does the same, does it?
Plus, I’m not an adorable human-being when drilled out of my bed before my 8-to-10-hour sleep cycle. Long story short: I woke up around 10:30 to leave around midday, which gave me at least 8 hours to non-stop hike the shit out of Glencoe. And man, I did.
And not only out of Glencoe, I marched all the way to Altnafeadh to subsequently grab a patch of the famous West Highland Road up to Kinlochleven (yeah, no clue how drunk - or how Gallic - the guy was who came up with those place names).
And trust me, that’s one hell of hike.
Even more so with soaked socks slowly rasping the skin of your heels. Yeah, not only couldn’t a 12-hour-cycle in the ‘dry room’ (only in Scotland) fight against the river in my shoes from yesterday, I also managed to thunder waist-down into a waterfall. Don’t ask.
BUT, thou shalt be rewarded!
The landscapes here are everything and a hundred times more what I expected. What you find in Glencoe is in one word overwhelming. To add some extra words to that: Massive, mesmerizing, enchanting!
Waterfalls clatter flawlessly from distant mountains, the light weaves colors into paralyzing pastels.
The inclining hills push you down into a tiny element grateful to form a part of this bigger story of flora and fauna. Walking passed the mighty mountain of Bidean Nam Bian I couldn’t suppress the urge to stop every 20 meters, trying to take it all in, reminding myself that this not some film scene but a truthful spectacle.
The trail suddenly stopped, which forced me to continue over the highway, almost flattening me between the crash barrier and heavy trucks raging over the asphalt. So I swiftly continued to the next look-out, where I could easily approach photo-snapping tourists and convince them to take me further safely. I let the loudly laughing lesbian couple from Germany drop me off at the opening of the West Highland Road and contently disappeared into the mountain pass, called The Devil’s Staircase… meeting almost no other people along the way, as they all had left at sunrise.
Nature was testing me.
Wind force 10, massive downpours, hail: I got it all straight over my face… but sometimes a few rays of sunshine tickled me to see if I still wasn’t defeated, coloring in the sceneries with colors you didn’t even know existed. This is what I live for.
I reached Kinlochleven when the sun was already set, realizing I didn’t take one single break the entire trek. I was a happy human, I did what I loved most in the best environment imaginable and I even managed to check off another Harry-Potter-stop: a new tradition on my Scotland-trail. Hagrid’s hut this time, filmed across the road from the atmospheric Clachaig Inn pub.
A bus-hitchhike-combination dropped me off at my remote hostel again, leaving me with a few hours for stretch-ups.
I had one more day and I was going to make the absolute most of it. First of all, my shoes were finally dry, as I sneakily had grabbed the hairdryer of the Uruguayan girl in my room and hung it in my smelly boots. Self-high-five! I decided to continue where I took off yesterday, as that whole West Highland Road fest had made quite an impression on me… I was going to walk the last part of this legendary trek, from Kinlochleven to Fort William.
I left about an hour earlier than the day before, and tried to catch a free ride to the center of Glencoe, as even that location in-the-middle-of-nowhere was far away from my own even-more-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. Luck was on my side, as some Dutch guy immediately halted and could even drop me off all the way in Fort William. Great, I’ll walk it the other way around then, if that saves me 4 full pounds you won’t hear me nagging. The moment I entered this city I realized the sheer fortune of not having booked a hostel in this underwhelming harbor town. The greenery, the peacefulness and the natural magic of Glencoe, all of that was lacking in Fort William. They probably do have internet here, so decide for yourself where your priorities lie.
I started the trail backwards from the city center, approaching the exhausted hikers that were about to finish this week-trek.
The first hour didn’t necessarily impress me… and neither did the second hour. It was just a wide rocky path suitable for heavy machinery traffic, followed by a foot-trail along endless empty fields full of chopped trees (because, I later learned, the ministry of environment decided to chop trees to provide a base for fungi and insects to breed under the branches, stimulating the arrival of new wildlife in turn feeding on them… right, whatever bro).
After that, however, it got better… much!
The brightly colored streams circling around the sloping mountains, endless panoramas into the valley... I got thrown back to my original wow-factor. I jumped rivers, painted artworks in the sand, let ants run over my fingers and took little sprints to escape the midges eating my face once I dared to stop for more than 2 seconds: nature is just one big playground for me.
Halfway I realized I had a foot injury, probably related to instant overburdening. Every step ached my muscle, shooting pain stimuli through my entire body with every landing. It’s just one of those situations where you get yourself into and no one but you have to get yourself out of that again as well. You’re standing on Ben Nevis, the U.K.’s biggest mountain, there’s no bus passing by there, I can tell you that. And the West Highland Road is endless… it would continue as far as the horizon, and once you managed to drag yourself all the way to that point there would be another corner revealing a handful of kilometers (miles, shut up) more. Miles of beauty, that’s for sure.
Another positive side to concentrate on: It’s clean! Oh so tidy! Where in Asia or Latin America it’s custom to ditch whatever trash you happen to have created BOOM right into nature, Europeans grew up with the habit of cleaning up their own shit. Especially in a place as breathtaking at this… you treasure it, leave it for generations to admire and only take your memories.