Day 95 West Highland Way day 4, an easier day to Tyndrum

Today was an easier day, less strenuous and shorter. I slept well, waking only to the traffic noise at some point in the night. Traffic? At this time? My sleepy brain had mistaken the river for traffic. I fell asleep again. Breakfast was good, just the thing to set you up for the day. We packed up our tents and were on the road, sandwiches bought, by 9 am.

We headed off along the river valley-the River Falloch-admiring the waterfalls whilst listening to the noise of the road and the railway line. Yes, today was like a geography lesson about transport links along a valley.

The River Falloch was very pretty although the path took us quite a long way above it.

We carried on along the river, climbing through a forest where we reached the halfway point of the WHW, which coincided with the halfway point of our day.

One of the more exciting bits of the day was St Fillan’s priory. St Fillan was an eighth century saint from Ireland who settled on the WHW. Next to the ruins of the priory is a graveyard on a mound where four eighth century gravestones were found. Three of them are covered up but one is still visible in situ

And in case that wasn’t enough excitement there was also an automatic weather station transmitting to the Met office HQ every hour. Guess how many days it rains there? 280.

We now crossed under the road and walked along a very pretty path by a river. To one side was a lochan (a small loch) where, so legend has it, Robert the Bruce deposited his sword after losing the Battle of Dalrigh (which was in a field near the lochan). He told the remnants of his army to throw their weapons in too. An archaeological metal-detecting expedition in 2015 didn’t find any signs of weapons, nor apparently any evidence of the battle which is a shame because it’s a good story

It was only a short walk into Tyndrum where we were staying at a hotel, a rather old-fashioned sort of hotel, but on the plus side, it had a lot of hot water and our room had a bath. We ate at a diner, where we had a rather good burger and chips.