Great Glen Way - Day 1 of 6

Friday, April 14. Fort William to Gairlochy/Spean Bridge. 

Today I began the Great Glen Way. 

I don’t know why I am so exhausted this evening. This first section of the Great Glen Way was only about 10 miles on level ground and in gentle weather. But the B&B where I am staying is 3-4 miles off the Way, plus I added almost 2 extra miles trying to find the official beginning of the trail (which was not where my map suggested it was) this morning, and then just now I walked an extra half mile out to, and then back from, the restaurant where I had dinner - so at the end of the day my iPhone estimates that I have walked 16.7 miles.

I loved the walk until the detour (in retrospect I should have called for a ride to the B&B). it was a very busy road with no shoulder and lots of cars whizzing by, lots of noise and fumes and an uncomfortable sense of how little space there was between them and me. Then unexpectedly it started to rain quite heavily and I had to stop and put all my rain gear on. I think mainly the fumes made me a bit sick and grumpy. When I finally arrived, I was disappointed that the B&B had no way for me to do laundry, that the room is colder than I would prefer, that even the drying room is cold, so it’s not really a drying room at all, that the breakfast is by pre-order (not a self serve buffet) with either/or choices that don’t allow me to select what I would most enjoy - that I kind of want to be spoiled at these non-hostel places and I feel decidedly un-spoiled here. Mostly I am disappointed that I am grumpy and not able to see and enjoy the beauty around me. Oh and my room has a sloped ceiling so I bump my head every time I get up out of this bed!

So now I am grumpy and discontent and hoping that writing this blog and sharing it with you will help me to shake it off. 

I get the image (when I say that) of a dog coming out of a lake and shaking itself all over so enthusiastically  that most of the wetness is just shaken off of its coat. I want to shake off my grumpiness and gloom and start seeing beauty around me again. I just decided to take my metaphor literally and shake my body vigorously and see if I can shake some of the yukky stuff away. 

(Pause for shake shake shake shaking)

That actually did seem to help. So - if you are feeling yucky too - may I recommend the River in Scotland special remedy for yukkiness? Just start shaking your body wherever you are - go ahead shake your whole body as fast and as energetically as you can, be a dog shaking off water. Keep it up as long as you can or until you start laughing and see how much better you feel. (The other magic remedy is a cold shower or immersion in a cold lake or river or ocean - but that takes a lot more time and effort. Though maybe I will do the cold shower - it’s actually also a pretty quick way to hit the reset button. )

A cold shower is a good idea in another way. Part of my disappointment with this B&B partly is that it is not as warm and comfy as I’d like it to be. A cold shower could totally change my self-pity over how cold it is into a sense of resilience and self-confidence that I can face the cold. So here goes!

(Pause for a very short cold shower!)

Well that was the shortest cold shower I have ever taken! But it’s true - I don’t feel like a victim, I feel that warm invigorating tingle and glow as my blood rushes back into my cold surface skin from which it so recently fled. That glow makes me feel strong and alive. The cold shower calls up my adrenaline and survival hormones  (the “I think I can” emergency team to the rescue!)and taps into a physical feeling of strength. My body is now all a-glow. 

So back to the promised breakfast! my day began with another great breakfast - and three cheers by the way for so many of you who read to the end of yesterday’s blog and gave me all kinds of warm attagirl pats on the back and kind comments. Or as they say here in Scotland “good on you.”  You sure earned the breakfast photos and I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed breakfast. What you see on my plate was followed by a bowl of yogurt and fruit. 

I left at 8:30am (this is the River who was starting at 5:30 am last week) and headed to the place where my Gaia app seemed to think the Great Glen Way should begin. But I didn’t find any signs or way marks at all. I realized I didn’t even know what the way marks for this new trail should look like. I was completely dependent on iPhone navigation to find my way. Fortunately after fallowing the track on my iphone for awhile I found the beginning of the Way and so my first waymark. 

I love that all the signs here are bilingual for both English and Scottish Gaelic. For a long while the route was in Fort Williams along Loch Linnhe. I was a little disappointed to be in the city  (I hadn’t realized that Fort William was so big). Then I pointed out to myself that I was out of the tourist area, and seeing houses and neighborhoods where ordinary Scottish people lived and went about their lives. 

The oath was shared by walkers, cyclists and horses. Though I didn’t meet any horses, I loved this structure to help with dismounting before a bridge and mentally I got down off my horse, led him across the bridge and remounted in the other side. Though I’ve rarely ridden a horse since I was a child this brought sweet physical memories of the smell and feel of that special connection with a horse. 

The walk took a turn and then for the rest of the day I walked along the Caledonian Canal. The walk was level and peaceful and very beautiful in an in dramatic way. I loved the quiet reflection of trees and hills in the canal. I loved the sky m, which was constantly changing and outwitting the forecasters by many beautiful moments when the same slipped out from behind cloud, winked, then went away. I began to think of the sun as flirting with me, playing hide and seek. 

It was fun to see boats both active boats docked or moving down the canal and a relic of a boat that stirred my curiosity about its history, the work it had done, people it had known, the stories it could tell. I would love to read its memoir. 

In the quiet of this walk I enjoyed the company and the colorful beauty of these ducks who swam along beside me for a bit of the journey. 

I was grateful for the contrast with West Highland Way , which was so varied and dramatic in its beauty. This was so calm and comforting and restful to walk along. 

I felt grateful for recent years drawing with my sister Judy. I often attempt to render a simplified version of a landscape or reflections in water and those attempts at looking closely and noticing shapes and color have really added to my ability to notice and find joy in what I see around me. 

Often when I look around I think “That would be fun to try to draw!” and it is as if my eye is caressing the shapes and colors with love. Sometimes I hear myself whisper (or even shout out - I was quite alone for most of the day, occasionally came upon locals, very rarely other hikers, so free to converse with the world around me) “You are SO beautiful.” Sometimes I even imagine the trees or the earth calling back “You are beautiful too!”

I listened to an album of Bobby Burns songs sung by Jim Makcolm (thank you Linda E for sharing these with me) during part of the walk, then to a couple of audiobooks I’d his poems being read aloud. I have read that Burns had children by many different women and lived a life not overly dominated by restraint and reason. I found in the poems such a delight in the pleasures of the world - nature, women, whisky - and an ability to regret without disowning that joy. It made me revisit some of my own lives and pleasures, times when I also loved kindly and blindly (to borrow his words). It didn’t erase the regret but the poetry helped me feel the joy right alongside it. 

Ae Fond Kiss

BY ROBERT BURNS

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; 

Ae fareweel, and then forever! 

Deep in heart-wrung tears   I'll pledge thee, 

Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. 

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, 

While the star of hope she leaves him? 

Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me; 

Dark despair around benights me. 

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, 

Naething could resist my Nancy; 

But to see her was to love her; 

Love but her, and love forever. 

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, 

Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 

Never met—or never parted— 

We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest! 

Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest! 

Thine be ilka joy and treasure, 

Peace. enjoyment, love, and pleasure! 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; 

Ae fareweel, alas, forever! 

Deep in heart-wrung tears   I'll pledge thee, 

Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee! 

I liked listening to him sing praises to whisky and its power to bring joy and abolish cares and was struck that the Scottish bard is a guide to my whisky trail. It was interesting to listen to the liens as I walked and even though I only partially understood them, I began to take in his celebration that whisky makes it possible to enjoy life and not surrender to grief and despair. He is helping me see that whisky - although it appeared to me as a child to make life darker than it needs to be - also helps people live with Joe very dark life can be. 

Here’s one:

Gie him strong drink until he wink, 
That's sinking in despair; 
An' liquor guid to fire his bluid, 
That's prest wi' grief and care: 
There let him bouse, an' deep carouse, 
Wi' bumpers flowing o'er, 
Till he forgets his loves or debts, 
An' minds his griefs no more.

And another:

Food fills the wame, an' keeps us leevin; 
Tho' life's a gift no worth receivin, 
When heavy-dragg'd wi' pine an' grievin; 
But, oil'd by thee, 
The wheels o' life gae down-hill, scrievin, 
Wi' rattlin glee. 

I like this poet. I sent his song about the devil taking the excise man and dancing with him as a song for my cousins with their morning dance. I was aware if Burns’ love of Scotland and identification with the hard-working poor (his own background). whisky was something poor farmers made themselves and the excise men - tax collectors - destroyed this home industry by the burden of taxes. I had forgotten that Burns himself had become an excise man to support his family. I am impressed by his ability in his life to live with the tensions of opposites - to live what he lives, face and embrace consequences, but not renounce what us good just because it is all mixed up and inextricably interwoven with what is bad. 

I wonder if living in this radically changeable climate with its roiling dark clouds and its trickster sun peeking out when least expected helped him become the poet he was. I wonder if walking through this particular world will help me make peace with some of the opposites of life I have found in the last to be irreconciliable. Perhaps this will help me to forgive both my own fallibility and that of the imaginary creator God who made this beautiful mess of a world. 

Here’s a sheep looks at me in curiosity before turning to scramble away. There they are again - those dark threatening clouds right alongside the patches of blue and the promise of sun. 

So tomorrow we walk again. I will get a ride back to the Way in the morning but it means we will be starting quite late in the day, around 9:30. The walk tomorrow is from Gairlochy to South Laggan, mostly it seems to be along Loch Lochy. The walk is 13 miles and tomorrow I will definitely ask for a ride to the place where I will stay the night, called Forest Lodge. I forgot to call ahead to order a meal with them but will call in the morning just in case it’s not too late. Meanwhile it’s time to get back to bed. 

Thank you for coming along. Let’s end with one more photo of a reflection that seems to be to celebrate the turbulent complexity of the always changing sky. 

I hope you will join me again tomorrow. See you then.