After a very peaceful night we awoke to a rather misty start which was a bit of a shame as it was the last day and I was really looking forward to this walk.
Still after the usual packing up in the morning, we drove down to the end of the road where the carpark was and got ready. It was pretty chilly and the clouds were covering all of what I assumed were mountains.
The walk is a 12 miles circuit of Loch Affric and starts in the last car park at the end of the main road through Glen Affric. There are two tracks lead out of the car park and we decided to go with the northside of the loch first as according to the map this would be the harder side and there was a river without a bridge to cross. I wanted to make sure we didn’t walk most of it and then have to turn back around if we didn’t cross the river as it’s pretty wet at the moment.
Some pigs at the start of the walk.
As we walked down the track a bit of blue sky broke through and soon our side of the loch was in sun with the clouds disappearing. This led to a slightly strange effect, half of the loch being in bright sun and the other half shrouded in cloud still.
After another hour the clouds had nearly cleared completely and we had the most gorgeous day with a view to match.
The walk itself is quite straight forward with a clear path all the way round, if you take a leaflet from the carpark then this is sufficient for a map. As you head along the north side of the loch, the track turns into a footpath and heads across the foothills of Carne Eighe (the second highest peak in Scotland) to the other end.
The views are spectacular.
We then come to the river and half to head up it a short way in order to find a place to cross.
Towards the end of the loch the path starts to turn back and drops down to two cottages sitting at the foot of the mountains with the river winding next to them.
From here a well made track is picked up and followed back along the south side of the loch to the car park.
The view from the car park at the end
We then drove back down to the other car park where we had stayed the night and enjoyed a quick drink in the sun before heading back out of the glen.
We planned to head further south again tonight in order to keep our journey time reasonable. From Loch Carran to our house would have taken 9 hours if we had done the drive in one go. We now planned on heading to Fort William for fuel and to gives us a reasonable 5.5 hours journey for tomorrow.
We arrive in Fort William and discovered Aldi was open!!! This is big news for us. Unfortunately as I tried to turn around to get back into the supermarket carpark, the gears (which had been slightly iffy at times) decided they were not having it. Eventually I got us back into the car park, and left Lee to get the shopping while I fiddled with the gears. Luckily it’s a nice new clean car park which was also dry, so rolling around on the floor adjusting the clutch cable, was not too bad.
We then drove on towards Glen Coe planning to find a suitable spot. We were tempted to head back to Clunes, but it would have been an hour round trip in the wrong direction.
I spotted a decent carpark just past Glencoe Village which was not too close to the road and quite sheltered by trees, but Lee didn’t like it. Then we drove through and out of Glen Coe looking for a spot he said was good, which althought it had a very nice view, was even closer to the road and also very exposed. So neither of us were particularly happy with that. The picture also emits the vans and lorries we would have been sharing with.
Having driven another hour already, we were not too far from our original stop on the first night, so we headed for this knowing that it would be a good place to stop. Especially as we had found a small track off the side down to the river which brought us out of a passing place and meant we wouldn’t be disturbed by passing cars, if there was any.
The Kombi Chronicles 