For some reason I hadn't slept very well last
night and my feet were already hurting a bit which meant I wasn't in
the best of moods, but at least it was dry, cool and sunny.
We soon were passing the Rowardennan Hotel where
we had eaten last night, also Rowardennan Lodge which is a Youth
Hostel and followed the still well-marked path through woods passing
Ptarmigan Lodge.
Here there is a short alternative section of the
WHW which passes close to the water in Loch Lomond and a slightly
higher alternative. We had been told at Coille Mhor that the parts of
the lower path had been washed away so there was no real alternative
to the higher route at the moment.
The walking was easy with a fairly flat path with
occasional short ups and downs. The problem with stopping for any
appreciable time was that midges would soon appear out of nowhere, so
we only stopped once in a sunny spot, but there were still a few
midges around.
We saw a couple, one English and the other North
American, who we had seen at the end of yesterday and we kept
leap-frogging each other as they were walking faster than us but they
kept stopping.
By now Karen's back was twinging and my feet were
sore so we kept just plodding along with the beautiful scenery and
sunny weather a consolation. I found the third day walking the Dales
Way the hardest and this year it seemed the same. I hadn't yet got
used to walking each day but had walked enough to have sore feet. I
was often mentally calculating how far we had come since we started
this morning and working out how far there was left to do before we
could stop for the day.
We reached Inversnaid Hotel after 6 miles with the
waterfalls roaring with water after all the previous day's rain. We
sat at a pick-nick table in the public car park nearby to have our
packed lunch.
We invited two Belgian men, who we had seen
yesterday, to join us as the other pick-nick tables were taken. They
were back-packing and camping and had come to the UK via the Eurostar
train and unfortunately they had their gas cartridges confiscated.
They hadn't been able to find any being sold of the correct type so
they must have had the type which is pierced when it is attached to
the cooker as there had been several places selling the screw-on
cartridges. Buying some of these would have been no use either as
none of the shops sold a cooker. This meant they had been living on
breakfast bars for the past few days!
Once we had finished our lunch, we continued on
our way with the path now quite rocky as it followed the lake's edge.
Although it was rougher going, we found it less tiring probably
because there was more variety of movement unlike the flat gently undulating path earlier in the day.
By now we were getting more tired and my feet were
getting very sore, so we just kept going and going as I found it
better to just keep walking rather than stopping and starting. Also I
wanted to go to the toilet which didn't help.
After what seemed a long time, we eventually
reached the Beinglass camp site at Inverarnan at 17:30, and I shot
into one of the toilets as Karen booked us in. We were staying in one
of the “wigwams” available on the camp site – they also had a
camping area and large chalets so offered choices of accommodation.
The wigwams were of two sizes: large and small and we had a small one
which was basically a wooden tent with a wooden floor and was raised
off the ground. It had an electric light, a small electric heater, a
couple of pads to lie on and two sleeping bags, cotton liners and
pillows on a slightly raised platform taking up about half the floor
space.
These were great as you weren't affected by any
wind and insulated to some extent from any noise when compared to a
tent.
The camp site also had a bar which served food, a
small shop and a covered area with seating, sinks and large domestic
cookers so that the Belgians were able to buy and cook some hot food
for a change.
It was a relief to be able to stop walking and not
worry about midges and the first thing we did was to have a lay down
and rest before having a shower and then later on, a meal in the bar.
It had been a hard and tiring day, but like I
found last year, the third day seems to be hardest.
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| Inversnaid Falls |
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| A bothy we passed on the way |
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