For such a small girl, Heley can eat a lot. We spent an hour over breakfast this morning. Heley spent it eating. The rest of the day followed suit. 10pm here and she’s now fast asleep in the B&B hoping her stomach doesn’t explode during the night.
There was only one choice available today, to rest and recover as best as possible. We decided to stay in the same B&B again tonight and then set off back into the wilds tomorrow.
We had hoped to climb Ben Nevis on this trip, but, like Glencoe, it has to make way for a more sensible option. It’s disappointing to miss two of the short-distance and beautiful sections of our trip. Especially as much of the distance has been replaced by walking along roads to and from doctors’ surgeries and hospitals.
Such is life though, and we’ve been lucky enough to have already seen so many fantastic views. Glencoe and Ben Nevis will always be there for us to visit. There is no need for us to risk the trip just to be able to say we’ve been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It’d be nice to think that we’ll come back again to enjoy the hills that we have missed, and we’ve found runners can get up Ben Nevis in under 2 hours, so that might be worth a try next year!
Instead of walking on a sunny day, we rested up today. Actually, we rested, shopped and ate. Our hosts at the B&B lent Heley some slippers, so she didn’t have to walk barefoot while shopping for sandals.
She ended up getting some “shandals”. Shandals are, apparently, a cross between shoes and sandals; they just look like sandals to me. After several iterations we’ve come up with a bodged strap which doesn’t rub against her blister. Hopefully it’ll speed her recovery and allow her to continue on the walk (or at least be able to put a propped pair of footwear back on).
We spent most of the rest of the day shopping for blister supplies and food. I lost track of what we ate over the course of the day, but our evening meal included pizza, chips, deep fried mars bar, ice cream and finally tea and cake. If I had been losing weight while walking I’ve surely gained it back after today.
We are back at the B&B now. Tomorrow we set off on the second leg of the journey. We’ve done Glasgow to Fort William, next up is Inverness. From there the hope is to head to Kingussie and on to Aberdeen.
For now though, it is one step at a time, we’ve walked over 100 miles, and are still on track to complete the walk.
As someone wiser than myself once said:
“… to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”