Highland Adventure

Whilst I've been in Edinburgh I've had trouble deciding how I would like to see the highlands. I had two options. The hostel I'm staying at is owned by a company called MacBackpackers. They run a variety of different tours up to places like Loch Ness, Inverness, the Isle of Skye and the West country. The tour outline did indeed attract my attention but in the end I decided to take the alternative option which was to do it myself. This option, however, became particularly attractive when I was offered a tent and a gas cooker to use by one of the kiwi fellas here at the hostel. It was decided. By going camping I would be able to get a better feel for the place and also save on accomodation costs. As a Spanish girl that I clean with here in Edinburgh was keen to do the same thing, we went together.

On the first day we caught a bus to Fort William which is a small town nestled between bare mountains on the West coast. The drive from Edinburgh by bus was nothing short of spectacular. I hardly got any sleep. Once we had arrived, we picked up some supplies at the super market before trekking out of town towards Glen Nevis, a valley known for it's jaw-dropping scenery and proximity to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in all of Britain. After hiking about the valley for a bit we found a great little spot to pitch the tent with views both ways down the valley and on big Ben. I was absolutely stoked.

Excited about our top spot, we quickly set the tent up and scouted around for some fire wood. As the token Australian fella, it was my duty to impress the Spaniard who had never made a bon fire before. The pressure was on but I decided to stick with what I knew and took the tee-pee approach.

As night fell we got some great views down the valley which would prove to inspire us to climb Ben Nevis the next day. Boy was it a task. Waking up at 6:30am, just before sunrise, we packed a back pack with cameras and equipement to make coffee whilst suiting up in warm clothes for the ascent. It took a whole 5 hours to climb to the top. We did climb the mountain last Wednesday but I can still feel the climb in my legs today! It was indeed hard work getting to the top but once we'd plateaued at the summit, it all became worth it as we hiked up and through the clouds. At the very peak, there was a concrete pillar which I climbed up and sat on for a moment of reflection. At that moment, I was the highest man in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It still blows my mind.

We took a coffee break at the top as we watched the clouds roll gently over the tops of surrounding mountains. I'll never forget the feeling of accomplishment we experienced right then and there.

We stayed the night at the foot of the mountain and in the morning we caught a bus right to the very coast where we pitched our tent alongside the water. The ground on this site was a little softer and so we thought we'd get a better sleep that night but something unexpected happened.

After a quick fire and some vegetable soup, we went to bed early at around ten but were woken up by this stray cow that had wandered away from the herd and found itself stranded on our beach!! This bloody thing mooed non stop from 1am to 6 when the sun rose! I couldn't believe our luck. More than tired the next morning and in dire need of a wash, I decided to take a little dip in the water which was what I could've sworn to be just a couple degrees off freezing. Here's a video. Grandparents be warned, fowel language is used in this scene, but I tried my best to hold it in. The temperature of the water did me no favours.

After robing up hardcore we had a coffee and then packed our stuff up once more for our move to the last stop, the Isle of Skye. Being an island off the coast, we had to catch a ferry to Skye which dropped us off near a bus station that we used to get to a beach that the information centre had reccomended us. On the map the beach was keyed in to be a "Sandy beach". When we got there, however, we realized that it was "Sandy" only by UK standards. In other words, there was sand there but only under a couple of layers of black rocks. Nevertheless we set up the tent on a grassy patch up from the rocks. That afternoon we got a cracking sunset and we even encountered a group of seals which would occassionally pop their heads up out of the water to check us out.

Dinner that night consisted of canned vegetable and chicken soup which I ended up wearing thanks to my poor decision to leave it in the fire for too long. I thought a grenade had gone off in the fire pit! I'm still finding pieces of carrot in my hair. hahaha. Check out the state of my jacket.

All in good fun.