West Highland Way West Highland Way – Day 5 – Inveroran Hotel to Glencoe Mountain Resort

I’ve met a lot of memorable characters on this trip. Here are a few that spring to mind:

The Stoner-Hobbits – For the non-Tolkien fans reading this, Hobbit are famous for prioritising regular food consumption throughout the day – breakfast, second-breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon-tea – and so on. Well the Stoner-Hobbits are humans who share the obsessive nature of the hobbits, but with weed. They’re quick creatures, often overtaking me. But I’d catch up with them at least every hour and find them either smoking or skinning-up. They’d squint up at me without recognising who I was and say “beautiful day, isn’t it”, every time. One time, I decided to catch them out and got in first telling them what a beautiful day it way. “Ya toook thi words reet out a mi mooth buddi!”, he replied!

 Caterpillar-man – I met him this afternoon. He was eating his fish and chips in a rush because he’d spotted 5 caterpillars and needed to go back and photograph them to get them identified. “So, you’re into caterpillars, then?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got 5 larvae at home in the fridge. I’m saving them for Spring. They’re really interesting ones because they eat each other.”

“For fun?”, I asked.

“No, just when they don’t have any other food”.

He dashed off…

Then, there are the Canadian lasses. They’ve been on the trail with me from the start. I met them in Drymen, when I felt like a bit of an outsider, starting further into the trail then everyone else. I’ve bumped into them almost every day, and they are so much fun. We finished in Glencoe Mountain Resort today and they went up to sky lift. It wasn’t quite the same as back home in Banff!

They met me back at the bar. We were invaded by wasps and one of them set about hammering one that had landed on the table with her bag. It turned out to be her freidns bag that contained her reading glasses. No harm done, though. Just another story to add to the list.

All of this pondering got me thinking if/what nickname I might have inherited. I was with some hard-core WHW-ers in the bar last night, and I’d called myself ‘the Imposter’. It’s all relative to what they’re doing, but while they’re carrying their gear and sleeping in wet forests, I was in a nice comfortable bed with the radiator on. A German lady asked if my tablet added much weight to the bag. I confessed that I had baggage transfer. She gave me a feigned dirty look and then burst into laughter.

Anyway, onto the walk today. I don’t have much to say about it because it was absolutely stunning, and that says it all. A ten-ish mile stretch across Rannoch Moor. The weather was beautiful, and the views as wild as they’ve been on the Way. I went slowly, taking lots of photos, not really wanting it to end. Here are my shots…