On the first day I took a rather long route following valleys to camp in a glen above Kinloch Hourn<\/a>. The next day was an incredible walk in bright sunshine along the side of Loch Hourn to the remote settlement of Barrisdale. On the following day I climbed a bealach<\/em> (mountain pass) into the Knoydart peninsula, finishing the day at the village of Inverie<\/a>. After a day off in Inverie, during which time I made extensive use of its excellend pub – The Old Forge<\/a> – and bought some more food, I set-off for the final three days walking. On the first day I walked over to the head of Loch Nevis, spending the night in the wonderful Sourlies<\/a> bothy<\/a>. From there I took a high path over to Glendessary and camped on a headland at the end of Loch Arkaig. On the final day I walked through an amazing V-shaped valley into the alpine looking Glen Finnan to finish near Glenfinnan village, passing under the famous viaduct.<\/p>\n (when I figure-out how to, I’ll post a kml<\/a> file of the route).<\/p>\n I passed through only one village, Inverie. Apart from the short section of road at Inverie,which isn’t accessible from the rest of the UK road network, I passed over no roads during the week. I camped five nights, spent one night in a bothy due to heavy rain (I had intended to camp nearby), and slept for two nights in the Knoydart Foundation<\/a> bunkhouse at Inverie. It rained several times every day (I had expected it to), usually for about half an hour at a time, but was generally fairly warm. I also took a new Sprayway Compact jacket, which did a good job of keeping me dry in some quite heavy rain. At the last minute I also bought a Sony DSC-W130 camera, which I’m quite pleased with. The photos are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Apart from a long weekend in the Lake District a couple of years ago, this was my first first time away backpacking for about five years. I used to spend a lot of hiking and backpacking, but having a young family has meant that such things become much less frequent. Although I missed my family a lot, it was great to be out there with my own thoughts in such a beautiful place. I’m very grateful to Debra (who became a solo parent for the week) for the opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s now two weeks since I get back from a very enjoyable week spent backpacking in the Scottish Highlands, and a blog post is long overdue. I walked from Shiel Bridge to Glenfinnan by way of Inverie in Knoydart, a distance of just over a hundred miles in six days, and passed through some amazing … Continue reading “A short walk”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outdoor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI took a few new, untried items of kit with me. The Primus Gravity<\/a> stove worked well but seemed quite heavy. I appreciated its stability, though. On a previous trip to Scotland my Pocket Rocket<\/a> stove tipped-over and dumped my food on the ground – rather alarming at the end of a long, hungry day (didn’t stop me eating it though!). I also carried two 1 litre platypus<\/a> water containers instead of a heavier Sigg bottle and Ortleib water bag. As well as being lighter the Platypus bags didn’t seem to taint the taste of the water. I used one while walking, and both when camped. Although I took chlorine tablets, I didn’t find it necessary to treat the water I drank.<\/p>\n![\"Evening](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3002\/2606435538_3123c704b4.jpg?v=0\" "\\"Evening")
<\/a>![\"Barrisdale](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3030\/2604926323_2dde96ebd6.jpg?v=0\" "\\"Barrisdale")
<\/a>![\"Outside](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3118\/2606340284_1110e3767e.jpg?v=0\" "\\"Outside")
<\/a><\/p>\n