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Thursday, April 10, 2014

Temporary Hickup - break again in Inverness

Back in Inverness to mend my foot (huge popped blister, one nail almost off)! First day was rather nice, all kinds of weather, as you might expect. Wet paths, where paths were even visible. Routing was behind the mountains along Loch Maree, then crossing a pass to a place (beautiful!)  called Letterewe. From there along the lake, camping in the woods to the north of the southern end of Lach Maree. Tired but a good day, fortunately with dry spells. Saw lots of wildlife, plenty of deer, wild goats, the odd rabbit. Wednesday, it rained from the start, never let up. The path to Leckie went ok, but it became increasingly clear that absent a bridge, there would be no way to cross the river, so I started to mentally prepare to walk back. But, there was a small unmarked bridge, unmarked on the road! Hallelujah, or so I thought... From there it was through no man's land heading southwest to Achnasheen, passing through the valley SW of Fionn Bhein. Turned out to be a really stupid choice of route: this was massive bog/moor! Not a flat square meter, everything wet, creeks across ground so soft it was impossible to cross in many places. Once I stepped in down to my knees. The whole acvompanied with driving rain, not letting up a minute. While beautiful, I really couldn't enjoy it, I was just really glad to know that at Achnasheen there would be a rail station and thus likely people. After 5 hours, I was in Achnasheen, soaked through. Worse, a massive blister had developed and popped, a nail had almost come off, and my backpack was ripped in one place, probably from a fall. Anyway, I could stay in a bunk room at a hotel in Achnasheen and decided to head to Inverness for "repairs:"  neither pharmacy nor seamstress in Achnasheen. So, I'm back in Inverness, looking after my foot and getting my backpack repaired. Then I'll continue, but I'm unsure from where, as I need to reroute a bit. I'm going to stick to marked footpaths for now unless I'm positive it's not bog!

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