Day 106 The End of the Great Glen Way and the longest day so far

My first longest day was a very long time ago in Cornwall (Day 12) when I walked from Port Isaac to Boscastle, fourteen miles. The second longest day was on the Pennine Way when Graham and I walked from Hawes to the Tan Hill Inn (Day 71, 17.4 miles). Today turned out to be 19.1 miles.

We had decided to start early. After doing an audit of our food we decided we had enough so didn’t have to trek back to the distant Co-op. Our plan was to walk for a couple of hours, then stop for breakfast. We set off at eight and made good time along the road (there was a pavement) stopping only to take photos of Urquhart Castle in the distance. After about a mile or so, we were caught up by Tim who is a very speedy walker. We chatted (and puffed) our way uphill and before we knew it we had done six miles and had reached the highest point of the day.

We decided to stop for breakfast, not realising quite how far we had come and Tim left us. After a quick flapjack (for me, Matthew had a roll and some cheese) sitting on a log, we moved on to find that we had been about one minute from a picnic table. Just after that we realised that we were only 1km from the eco-cafe that we hadn’t expected to reach until lunchtime.

The cafe tantalised us with signs until we turned off the path and arrived. The Abriachan eco-cafe is an amazing place, off-grid, but serves coffee, cake and soup. Matthew had soup which came with cheese and oatcakes and I had coffee and an enormous slice of lemon cake. Tim was there when we arrived but left after finishing his equally enormous slice of lemon cake at which point we were joined by Mark the cockerel and Squeak the pig. Another hiker came along- we had to rescue her backpack from Squeak. Happily there was no damage other than a bit of pig slobber.

Mark the cockerel joined us too but he confined himself to pecking up a few cake crumbs from the floor

Feeling replete we set off again. There were views to both our left and our right today although we could no longer see Loch Ness. There was some road walking on a very quiet road, some forest path walking, and joy of joys, a drove road.

We carried on, stopping only for handfuls of blaeberries and slowly descending on the drove road until Inverness came into view below us

We turned once more onto the canal and then through parks to the River Ness and across it’s islands to the city centre

And there it was, the end of the Great Glen Way at Inverness Castle. We had conquered our nineteen mile day before four o’clock. Almost enough to make me think I might set off before breakfast again some time.

Tomorrow is a rest day and I will be on my own again for the final 150 mile push to John O’Groats.