Day 12 - Inveroran (Bridge of Orchy) to ??

Day 12 - Inveroran (Bridge of Orchy) to ?? Hike Day 5 - Inveroran (Bridge of Orchy) to ?? #westhighlandway2024

I put ?? Because in theory it's to Kinlochleven but we might bail out at Kingshouse depending on vibes and possibly even add an extra day to do things in stages

We are off!

And we made it, loooong day

Did some steppies today

Alright, on the way to the guest house, due to space constraints doing two nights at Fort William and getting ferried to and from it to restart where we ended

Oh yeah since I didn't know if we'd make it all the way I didn't specify earlier but made it to Kinlochleven!

Flavor text from the guide with the caveat that it was 4km longer because we started from Bridge of Orchy, not Inveroran.

Dist.: 30km/19 miles | Time: 7-10 hours | Ascent (🠝): 780m/2560ft | Descent (🠟): 970m/3180ft

Terrain: Some road walking, then a hike across beautiful, but very exposed moorland with little shelter; mostly on old, but good coach roads; stunning landscape, but challenging in poor weather conditions.

From Kingshouse mountain paths and some tracks with occasional rough stretches; one longer, steep climb to the Devil’s Staircase, followed by a long and sometimes steep descent into Kinlochleven

Stats:

Strava is more generous with the elevation which seems right more accurate because the guide says 780 and bridge of Orchy to Inveroran is another 130 or so

Stopped for dinner now at the bnb

Time to hike post, today I took a lot more photos, the theme of today was or the instrumental version so liten to it as I post after my shower

To start with the weather was perfect, night and day vs yesterday, blue skies and low enough temps the sweating was mostly under control... But onto photos this is THE Bridge of Orchy itself

Ferny trail led to a more wooded one leading to a more hill/mountain trail

Sun peeking through during our ascent, then the trails as we went up with a view

More of the Loch, hard to really capture the scale and the colors but that's a theme throughout

A circular view from the top of the hill

Loved this lonely lil' tree as the descent started, this hill was around 130m up and down in probably like 2km each way

Saw a little guy at the bottom of the Hill's trail marker

Road to Inveroran which would have been the starting point

Made it here! Roughly 4km into the day so far

And the road goes ever on up to the entrance to the old military/driver's road

This led into Rannoch Moor (which is the apparently the largest uninhibited area in the UK at a WHOPPING 130 sq km)

The info text had this (accurate) warning:

> The next 10km can be a beautiful and easy hike on a good day. But in bad weather the walking is heavy going as there is little or no protection from the elements in this remote area of the Highlands.

Luckily we had perfect weather

Tried to take a lot of pics of the road as the moors just seemed endless

This mountain was really imposing as we approached Kingshouse

Then made it to Kingshouse at around 12:40 having left at 7:40, had lunch for like 30 mins and decided to soldier on, this was around 20km in, 14 to go

Trail started along the flank of another mountain roughly following the main road in the area which we've criss crossed multiple times as we and it weave through the Highlands in different ways

Same mountain as before from the other side

Then.

Basically it's a 260m climb over 1.6km so it's fairly grueling but not impossible, not really super dangerous, just exhausting, didn't take a lot of pics of the view upwards which maybe I could have, but some sections were a bit tricky, the slant doesn't show well

I take did pics looking down a lot, you can see the house shrink (it already starts small near the middle)

Then was the slow descent down to Kinlochleven, roughly 7.5km to go

Then began a much steeper descent into the town itself on a service road that zig zagged down

We were a but time stressed as when we called for the cab to the bnb he was he was booked till 730 but he was able to move us into another one at 6 so we needed to rush, funnily enough it was split with the other couple on our itinerary, though often on different hotels

But, finally, we had made it with 20 mins to spare

This shot in a small shortcut inside the town was truly magical

Funny story at the bnb just now before turning lights off saw a fairly large spider, went to the owner and he said they don't bite here and came and just cupped it with his bare hands and took it outside... Powerful. Marked sensitive for spider in case...

And that's that, very sore gang here so tomorrow will be quite rough but... We will try and make it work.