The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Wednesday 19 October 2011

East to West Photos: The Finale–Day 42

Sunday 8 May (0700-1605) (Resipole to Ardnamurchan)
Distance: 26.5 miles (Tot: 747)
Weather: wet until 2pm, then increasingly fine

Two and a half miles through our monster day we came across an exciting signpost. You know you’re getting close when there’s a brown signpost naming your destination:

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An interesting bit of demolition. It would have been better if they’d left the three flying ducks above the fire place and maybe a mug on the mantle piece:

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It may have been predominantly a road walk, and the weather may have been decidedly wet, but some of the views weren’t too shoddy:

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There was a little bit of a yomp to break up the road walking (also, conveniently, cutting off a big loop in the road):

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On that yomp we saw a herd of deer – incredibly the only deer we saw on the whole trip.

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Until 2pm it had looked like we were going to have a rather grey and damp walk in. Then the rain stopped and as the cloud started to break up. By the time we were past Kilchoan and well into the final leg of the day, the weather had done a complete about-turn:

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Glorious! Blue skies, blue seas and the lighthouse just a mile away:

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See! There it is.

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Only a few paces to go!

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More gloriousness:

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Beyond the lighthouse is the fog horn, which seemed like a good location for the ‘finish photos’.

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As we didn’t conveniently have a photographer with us, we had to call the stick-pic into action (really must practice using the stick-pic without getting the hands and walking pole into the shot!):

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We couldn’t get the lighthouse into view using the stick-pic, so we had to take turns for those shots:

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And then all we had to do was to go and mug three old ladies to get a lift back down to Kilchoan. It was actually rather a shame how the trip ended. I would much rather have taken the originally planned two days to get from Resipole to Ardnamurchan, to take a less tarmacked route, and to have had time to loiter at the end. But, thanks to the severe leakiness of the tent (which had become apparent the previous night) combined with the increased raininess of the weather, we had to conclude that the only thing to be done was to get the walk finished and get ourselves to Fort William where we could sort out the tent situation before the start of the TGO Challenge.

At some point we will return to Ardnamurchan to explore the area more thoroughly. But, I digress. What (I’m sure) you really want to know is where you can find the original blog post for the day, and the answer to that is: by clicking just here.

3 comments:

  1. Great reading your trip all over again and seeing all the pic's. Looking forward to your next outing!!

    Carol

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  2. I agree with Carol.
    By the way are there still traffic lights on that final bend in the road. They took me by suprise when I first went there a few years ago.
    The Cambrian Way next ? - highly recommended although pretty tough. We did over a number of years (8 I think !)
    Bill W

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  3. Any maps out and being feverishly pored over?

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