The Blog

Day 8
June 18th - From Fort William to Crianlarich

All my experiences of youth hostels on this trip have been good ones, until today. It was nothing to do with the place or the people running it but everyone staying there (except yours truly !) seemed totally depressed. Everyone seemed to be walking around with their heads down, maybe they were all knackered after climbing Ben Nevis or depressed at the thought of having to climb it. Anyway, after a week of everone being so friendly it was a bit of a surprise.
I left fairly early and got going at about 9ish. I had planned to head for Oban but after checking the map that seemed a bit out of my way so I went into the local tourist information to enquire about the route through Glencoe. The chap in there said it was a steady climb but not a steep one and quite a good road so I decided to go that way and head for Crianlarich instead. It was still 50ish miles away but was a much more direct route to the Glasgow area.
The weather was cloudy and it had been raining in the night but it was now pretty good cycling weather apart from a light easterly wind which I was heading into. A few miles out of Fort William the sun started breaking through and as I went across a high bridge and turned off towards Crianlarich there were some superb views of the land below. I stopped for a bacon roll, phoned my mum in Spain and then set off up the Glencoe road. It was a gentle climb, the headwind made it quite hard work but my mind was taken off the cycling by the views ahead of me. At one point three Tornado jets came hurtling up the glen towards me, if I had my camera ready it would have been a brilliant picture but they were past me before I even heard them coming. I waited for a couple of minutes with camera poised hoping for a re-run but they were gone.
After a couple of miles I pulled over into a parking area for a drink and noticed that the gps had done its party-trick of dying on me yet again. According to this heap of junk, while I was standing there having a drink I was actually doing 5.7 mph. All I could do was turn it off and on again thereby losing all the data to that point. It crashes so often I'm starting to think it was made by Microsoft.
I could hear bagpipes in the distance and as I travelled up the road, I saw in the next parking area there was a piper busking with a huge crowd of tourists milling around him. I decided not to stop and plodded on hoping the road would level off soon. Eventually it did and by now the sun was out in full force and I think this was the hottest it had been so far (the thermometer on the bike computer read 79F at one point). I changed into short sleeves and started what I hoped would be a nice easy descent down the other side but the wind had picked up and I found myself having to pedal to keep going in places.
There had been no cafes for quite a while now and my water bottle had been empty for several miles. To make things worse I had even run out of snickers bars. Fortunately, as I crossed the border into Stirling there was a sign for a shop 2 miles ahead called The Green Welly shop. Thankfully it didn't just sell green wellies and I stocked up on everything. From there it was just a few miles to Crianlarich and when I arrived in the very picturesque town I felt as though I could carry on a bit. It was only 5pm so I asked in a shop whether the next town on, Ardlui which was 9 miles away had many b&b's. The lady said not so I decided to play it safe, call it a day and headed for the youth hostel just up the road.
The people here seem much chirpier than those at Ben Nevis and there is even another end-to-ender who is going from south to north and who got a good drenching in those storms last week.
Total mileage today (thanks to the ever-reliable vdo computer) was 56 which is the same as my average so far. I've done the maths and I'm past 1/3 distance so I will have to pick the pace up if I am to finish in 3 weeks but it is not out of the question yet.

The Routemap


The Speed (in blue) and the Elevation (in green) from half-way up Glen Coe.