2017 TGO Challenge Day 1

2017 TGO Challenge Day 1

Mallaig to Runival - 12.5 miles

Total Trip Miles: 12.5

Friday, May 12th, 2017

(Click on any picture to make it larger)

Day 1 Part 1

Day 1 Part 2

It finally hit me when I woke up on Day 1 of the challenge that I was back in Scotland!!  Walking across the highlands one more time, and this time with a friend to share the misery enjoyment!  After a large breakfast, we checked out and headed to the harbor where we would catch the ferry to Inverie.

The Ferry

The giant pile of backpacks on the ferry

Inverie in the distance

The ferry ride was about 30 minutes and was quite chilly, Leslie got a nice video clip of the scenery:

Once we docked we walked down to the water to do the tradition toe dip.

The ferry docked at the Inverie pier (Photo by Leslie Grossman)

The Toe Dip

Yours truly in a weird pose

For those of you wondering if we're ever going to actually do the whole walking thing, this is where it begins...

After taking pictures of ourselves and others, we didn't begin walking until after 11am.  We walked down the road in Inverie, which is the most remote town (village?) of mainland UK.  It also holds the most remote bar, The Old Forge, which was closed until 3pm, I believe.  Some other challengers stopped at the cafe in town, but we figured we should get walking.  We started out with some beautiful scenery along the road.

We soon made the turn inland where we walked along the Inverie River to Loch an Dubh-Lochain

Looking back towards the coast

Challengers ahead of us going through a small forested area

Inside the forested area

The Brockett Monument

A group on horseback passed us

A small bridge over the Inverie river where it connects to Loch an Dubh-Lochain

Loch an Dubh-Lochain

 We stopped at one of the small rivers feeding into the loch to refill our water and have some lunch as it was close to 2 in the afternoon.  One challenger passed us as we ate after a brief hello.  We were sitting in the grass eating lunch, which came to an abrupt halt as I noticed a tick crawling on my pant leg.  Thanks to the permethrin I had treated my pants with it died and fell off, but we decided it was time to go!

From the loch we began the ascent up and over Mam Barrisdale which would eventually take us down into Barrisdale Bay in Loch Hourn.  About halfway up the climb we started getting some sporadic rain, and the path up was already pretty saturated (as you can see in the picture below).

Leslie before she realized the full extent of what she signed up for

The view of Gleann an Dubh-Lochain partway up Mam Barrisdale

The view of  Gleann Dubh-Lochain from about halfway up the climb

The same view even higher up

We noticed some deer across the valley on Cnuic nan Eildean (I think)

Finally at the top!

The view

At the top of the pass we ran into John J having a snack (check out his blog here).  We joined him in taking a break and then decided to hike down together as we all heading along Loch Hourn.  We had put on jackets during our break as it was cold on top of the pass, but as we descended the air got still and quite humid.  Halfway down we all had to de-layer.

We arrived at a busy Barrisdale Bothy late in the afternoon, where John had intended to stay, but he decided to push on with Leslie and me.  Leslie and I were set on making it to our chosen camp spot for the night, Runival, and at this point John said if he found something along the way he was going to stop and camp.

Barrisdale Bothy

We stopped to take pictures along Barrisdale Bay as the sun was beginning to set:

The track from Barrisdale to Runival took longer than it felt like it should have.  There were lots of little ups and downs and exhaustion was beginning to set in.  We finally made it to Runival around 8pm, but luckily summers in Scotland provide plenty of daylight (until about 10:30pm at this point) so we had plenty of time to set up camp and have dinner before turning in.

Runival -- we camped on the promontory behind the smaller tree