DAY 5, from Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy + from Bridge of Orchy to Kingshouse, 30 km

Our original plan was to make Day 5 a short and Day 6 a long one (around 36 km). The frantic weather forecasts made us lose interest in the horizontal scenery and focus more on the skies instead.

We got to Bridge of Orchy around noon. Yet it hardly felt like having left the bed at all. Doing a 12 km walk and trying to call it a day actually makes you rather anxious. Your body gets confused and tells you to keep moving or something strange and unexpected shall follow. And so you become more restless with each person passing. We saw the German guy (with whom our road had crossed a couple of times already) reaching Bridge of Orchy and taking off with his ankle having gained a bit of support from our day-saving ibuprofen gel. We saw people coming from our morning direction, crossing the road and heading towards Kingshouse, straight up the tiny hill behind our hotel. K was drinking coffee at the hotel bar and we were both feeling horrible at having to stay put. We had known it was going to be a short day, but not this short, not really. Also, there was no sign of the promised downpour. The weather report was actually changing now. Now it merely promised rain and wind.

And this got us thinking. Should we try to get a room at Kinghouse tomorrow and postpone everything in our itinerary by one day? We did have an extra day counted in at the end. (That clever, eh?) Or, should we take half of the journey by bus tomorrow and… come back some other time and finish the unwalked bit? I can’t fully remember the reason behind our reasonings but there must have been a very bad weather report, that’s all I’m saying. Also, K’s toe(s) were getting quite aggressively painful by that time, so we were a bit concerned about the 36 km day ahead. I then called the Kinghouse hotel and learnt that they did have the last vacant room left, but only that one and only for today. That would have meant an extra £170.- for our trip, since Kingshouse is not a budget hotel and our room at Bridge of Orchy could not be cancelled without paying the entire fee.

We sat in the the small bar and looked out of the window only to see more backpackers pass. We thought. I was crunching numbers in my head. Technically, it would be doable. But would it be reasonable? Promising to myself that yes, there will be a thing I’ll do differently on my next long distance trek – I’ll make sure I’ll have proper emergency reserves for changing my mind and itineraries on the go without having to take a thinking break. Yes, extra reserves and a razor, the two things I’ll take along when stepping out of the door again.

Then, she fucking did it! K figured out how we could walk the entire way without giving our budget a spastic fit → we could start walking right now, crossing the Rannoch moor today, still reach Kingshouse in daylight and then take a bus back to our hotel. All we needed to do tomorrow, would be to take a bus from our hotel to Kinghouse and then continue our journey from there, thus making tomorrow’s distance half shorter as well.

All the happy bells were ringing in my head!

I ran to the reception to ask for local bus times. The bus schedules fit in with our plans with near-eerie perfection. We jumped up from our table, counting the blessings from the couple sitting next to us and looking a bit worried. They asked whether we had enough lunch on us to run off to the moor. With the crazy haze in our eyes, we shouted “Yes, of course!”, to which I ran to the hotel bar to buy some carrot cake and then, having luckily gotten the key to our room hours earlier, dashed upstairs to re-pack. Now, we could only take the rainproofs and some food items we would need for a half a day.

This is the moment when you have a look at you and your friend and think who are these people who, upon hearing that gales have been downgraded to wind and rain, throw candies into their backpacks and rush out to the moor. Suddenly we had become children going out into the forest for the first time – lunching on cake, candy, cookies and chocolate.

The magnificent Rannoch moor was a moor surrounded by mountains. Being a flat-land creature in my days of youth, these things still come as a surprise. A moor between mountains! A moor where you step over heather roots and look at the clouds play with the hill tops around you – a very different sight from the marshlands where the marsh pines are the tallest beings surrounding you. (I come from the North, I’m allowed to call trees “beings”, ok?)

We walked the second half our day very quickly, reaching Kingshouse already around five in the afternoon. Upon nearing our destination, the craggy Buachaille Etive Mòr came into sight. While it was mostly covered by cloud in the rapidly falling daylight, it had everything I had expected to see without having known of it existing. This is how you recognise a dream having come true.

Slowly, my whispers turned into a mantra of “I’m coming back here, I’m coming back for you, I’m coming back to you”. I am walking the West Highland Way for the joy of walking and not for gathering locations for secret parties in the future, but I’m definitely taking my lover here next spring, oh god, yes. Because today was the day when I fell in love with a new mountain.

At the end of the day, we did not even have to take a bus back. We got a lift from a Dutch extreme survival instructor who was just returning from his four-day trip to the forest without having taken any food with him. He had survived on mussels and fish. He looked very untroubled.

We are living the times where all places and moments are beautiful.