John Hesp's Hike Across Scotland 9

TGO Challenge - A Walk from Glenuig to Montrose

Day 8 – A short day

I woke up to heavily overcast skies which was a bit of a surprise; one assumes the good weather will last.

Today I planned to walk along the road above the north shore of Loch Tummel then strike up and over the ridge and down into Blair Atholl. I was away at 8:15 and crossed the old bridge for a third time. My log notes that I seemed to have been walking down this glen for a long time – Wed afternoon, Thur, and Fri morning. But below Tummel Bridge the scenery, although pleasant, lacked the ruggedness that appealed to me higher up the glen.

Just outside Tummel Bridge I passed a hydro power station which gets it’s water through a six mile (10km) long tunnel from Loch Errochty. Apparently the building is faced with stone from the tunnel.

Four miles down the road at an hotel a footpath signpost read “Blair Atholl”, and I turned off the road and followed an old right-of-way up the hill side.

Just past a rather nice cottage with views of the loch I entered a plantation and immediately had trouble finding my way as trees had blown down over the path. Once I’d regained the path it was reasonably easy to follow, although I did find that if not lost, I had managed to take a long route through the wood, and I came out of the wood in a slightly different place to that expected.

After I emerged from the wood I stopped to have something to eat beside a small stream above Loch Bhac. This was a pleasant enough spot, and it reminded me of Exmoor, which made me wonder if it was worth travelling all this way to see scenery such as I see at home. It then started to rain in a determined way so I packed up and set off down into Blair Atoll thinking that given the opportunity I would divert to more rugged areas in the coming days.

After a couple of miles of descending a good moorland path I arrived at the farm of Balnansteuartach. A crow was in a sort of cage just up from the farm. Some sort of trap? The farm itself was interesting – it was all too easy to believe that there might be something nasty in the woodshed, or even the farmhouse. All the gates to the fields were open so that the livestock could wander where it would. A ram had a horn caught in a fence near the farmhouse, and I guessed somebody would soon come out and rescue it, but as I moved on I began to wonder, as I passed several dead lambs in the mile and a half (2km) to Blair Atholl.

I had to wait a while before I could cross the busy A9, and then a path took me down a slope to a footbridge over the River Garry and into Blair Atholl.

I found my way to Blair Castle Campsite where I had another very large parcel waiting, and put the tent up in my allotted space. £15 seemed a bit expensive after camping for free wherever I liked. A packet of dehydrated soup from France – Poireaux et Pomme de Terre – courtesy of my brother Ralph made lunch, and then I tried out the campsite’s very posh showers.

Back at the tent I sorted out the parcel, allowing enough food and snacks for the coming six days and putting the rest back in the parcel along with used maps and dirty clothes. I then took the parcel down to the post office, sent it south at great expense, and then found the tearoom in an old mill which had been recommended on the train journey north. A very cosy and civilised place after the hills.

In the tent I listened to the noise of rain on the tent as I studied the next few days’ route on the maps. I was a bit hazy about the geography east of the A9. Cups of tea and a new book (I’d sent the last one home half read – mistake) made for a restful afternoon. I made a schedule to get the best use of my new, clean, dry socks, given that they were more likely to get wet on the first few days and I wanted cleanish ones in Montrose.

Dinner was a sauce which I rehydrated for an hour, and noodles. Rehydrating the sauce for an hour improved it, but I decided that in future, when in civilisation I'd use local food instead of backpacking food.

I phoned home and Challenge Control from the campsite phone box using my phonecard. These phonecards are are interesting. Quite rightly they're recommended by experienced Challengers, as they can be used at any of the increasingly scarce phone boxes, but using them means tapping in about 106 digits before you make a connection, and there's something about long strings of numbers which is very confusing. Or so it seemed after days of the simplicity of just eating, sleeping and walking.

Photo - TGOC2009_Day08_05