A peaceful night by the river and an efficient start to the day and ready for off by 9am. The walk began with a short 1km sprint along the vergeless A832 to reach the safety of country lanes winding gradually upwards through farmland, forest and moors with a bitterly cold wind from the north biting at my neck under the grey sky. After 9 miles or so without to much to see I got a good view of some high ridges to the west and finally reached the Great Glen Way – the first of 5 national trails I will follow on this trek (although I will not walk any of them in their entirety). So away with the paper maps and out with the Trailblazer Guide. After a brief lunch stop the next 3 miles were on decent forest track initially up then gradually down towards the first views of Loch Ness through the trees and onto an easy path zigzagging through the forest down to the main road, by which time the sun had come out giving some amazing views across the Loch. The last 2 miles along the roadside path into Drumnadrochit were easy enough. So 17 miles closer to LE but then a return road trip on Betty to Inverness to find a vet to treat his enflamed toe and a tick removal, then back to Drum and a wild camp outside the Benleva Hotel under renovation but frequented by some fantastic local people.
Hope PJ is ok, your doing great Dave!
PJ is not quite so good but we’ll see how he goes now x
What a wonderful place to be! Sounds like it’s all going well apart from poor PJ hope the vet sorted him out x
Still no rain PJ OK but not brilliant, Betty still has a couple of issues and Cath is still a legend