July 31, 2015 - West Highland Way recap

Today we did a little walking around town, shopped for some books for me, did a little grocery shopping, and found an indoor pool where Peg was able to swim for about 90 minutes.

By my GPS readings we hiked a total of 85.98 miles in seven days. We had one day with no rain. Temperatures varied very little with lows in the mid 50s and highs in the mid 60s. We just finished our store bought dinner at the B&B while watching the news and found out the this has been Scotland's wettest July ever. When we did get sun the colors were all the more brilliant, the cloud patterns caused some beautiful light patterns on the mountains and great shadows as it filtered through the forests.

The trail conditions ranged from a little road walking to some very rough scrambling. What we originally thought was rough trail after a few days was welcomed. The trails were always wet and through some of the bogs we were in over our ankles. There was very little level hiking but only a few severe ups and downs. Peg counted her blessings when she got twenty feet in a row of smooth trail. Her walking sticks are her new best friends. 

The wild flowers were abundant - purple fox glove everywhere, lots of daisies, yellow sinq foil, lavender fire weed, purple tyme and heather just to name a few. Peg saw her first shamrocks in a conifer forest on day seven. We traveled through forests of oak, birch, Hawthorne, and several types of evergreen.

We have enjoyed the food so far. We still haven't braved the haggis. A full Scotish breakfast starts with fruit, cold cereal, coffee and tea. The hot portion consists of any or all of eggs, porridge, bacon, sausage, potato scone, tomato, beans, mushrooms and toast. Sometimes the combinations are not what we are used to such as lasagna served with French fries. The coffee has been quite weak and I'm looking for to the possibility of a Starbucks in Edinburgh.

We started and ended with many of the same people although rarely walking with them during the day. The ones we saw most of were two couples from Australia, a couple and their son (age 12) from  Germany, a single woman from Australia, a couple and a single woman from California and thee couples from Holland.

We really enjoyed the Scotish countryside and are looking forward to our next leg from Fort William to Inverness starting Sunday.