What a great investment! As soon as we got into bed it started raining. We kept wishing it would rain harder since we had heat and had spent the money; nature complied! I hope no one camping out last night ever reads this and knows we were cheering the weather on against them.
We slept nice and toasty until 8:30. Everything we owned was dry and warm. We ate breakfast in the wigwam and packed up before hitting the road at …. 10:30!
It was a nice easy walk all the way to Tyndrum. We caught up with Dan, Peter, and Marcia along the way. We talked and walked with them all the way to town. We shopped in town and bought a little food for a picnic lunch. We even indulged in some ice cream. On the way out of town, we ran into our UConn friends again and hiked with them several more miles. Today was an easy, level walk all the way to Bridge of Orchy. We got caught in a nice downpour on a bridge with Dan, Peter, and Marcia about 4 miles outside of Tyndrum. We were under a nice canopy of trees so we didn’t get very wet while eating our lunch.
After lunch, we ended up dropping behind and lost DPM. Although it was only 3 miles to Bridge of Orchy from our lunch spot, we started dragging and lost energy. We hadn’t decided where we were going to stay for sure tonight, but it looked more and more like there. Once we got to the Inn, we went inside to rest and grab some food. We ordered some sweet potato soup and got in a rear corner of the restaurant so we could take off our boots and roll out our feet—heaven! The only problem was 1 tennis ball, 4 feet.
After our soup and foot massage, we were invigorated. We decided to push on another 2.5 miles to Inveroran Hotel where our guide book said there was free camping just past the hotel. We got going and were fascinated by the bridge even though it’s not quite 300 years old. Once we got climbing away from the bridge, it started to rain. It rained on us the entire 2.5 miles, but we were feeling really good and the rain only made us walk faster. We got to the Inveroran Hotel and saw the camping area down the road by the creek. There were already lots of tents up. We went and grabbed a spot, set up camp, and then went back to the pub in the basement of the hotel.
What a cool pub! It was small with only about 8 tables and a tall bar and it was packed. Not uncomfortably so. Around the top of the room was a “map” of the WHW with all the major towns along the way and some funny pictures depicting different sites along the way. Also we had a hard time recognizing all the languages being spoken, but we were able to pick out German, French, Dutch (Belgium), Scottish, English, and some others we couldn’t identify (or maybe they were just drunken versions of the ones we could identify.
After a couple pints (we tried some cider but didn’t like it—way too sweet) we decided to head back to the tent for the night. When we went outside, there was a deer right there and it would almost let us get up close enough to touch it. After taking a few pictures, we decided to share the experience and knocked on a window in the pub to get some people’s attention. We pointed at the deer but no one was very impressed. About that time, the kitchen door opened and one of the cooks came out and said “Daisy, are you bothering customers again? Come over here and get your food and leave the people alone.” We had met the infamous Daisy of Inveroran and didn’t even know it.
