Glencoe

What a day we had. After leaving Fort William this morning in relatively low spirits, we headed for Glencoe, stopping first at the visitor centre. It was OK but nothing special (bar for the surly young lass serving at the cafe). So we drove on in the hope of finding a good place to walk. After a couple of false starts, we parked up the car and found a rocky trail heading up into the hills. While not being ones to go in for all the Celtic mysticism rubbish, we both felt that this was a pretty special place, owing more to the natural history of the place than glorified government sanctioned masssacres. We marched onwards and upwards for over an hour (are we there yet?) over alternately rocky, muddy and just plain old wet terrain. On reaching the summit, we were treated to a magnificent vista, of even more rocky, muddy and just plain old wet trails! But seriously, you are dwarfed by the immensity of the place which makes it amazing to think that it was once three times higher than it is now. We reached the car tired but very very happy...a big lunch was justified! After lunch we decided on a circuitous route to our destination for the evening, Port Appin. We headed east from Glencoe, following the trail of the hills inland to Rannoch Moor (starkly beautiful as you would expect) then through Bridge of Orchy and a "short-cut" down along Glen Orchy (a tiny, up and down, windy, bumpy and narrow road) which again was lovely...it is near impossible to turn down a road and not have great views in this part of the world. The trip back to the coast took us along Loch Awe and Loch Etive on the far side of the Glencoe highlands, coming out just near Oban and then heading north again to come home to roost in Port Appin for the night...