Captain's Log

Pan-Banging

I woke up in the early hours at my wildcamp on Rannoch Moor. Heavy rain was beating down on my tent and somebody or something  was banging a metal spoon on the bottom of a pan, pretty much like during those bizarre covid days. It was so loud it had woke me up. Not only that, the rain was so heavy that I had genuine concerns that the nearby stream might overflow and engulf my camp before I had time to protect the tent’s entrance with sandbags. I grabbed my headtorch and poked my head out of the tent to investigate and to assess the situation. My face hit a wall of water that abruptly brought me to my senses. The pan banging had stopped now and I scanned the line of the trail with my torch, but couldn’t find anything looking back. Also, the water in the stream was well up from the previous evening, but it was nowhere high enough to engulf my tent. I put my head back in the tent, dried it on my micro towel and promptly fell back to sleep. My pan-banging investigations would have to continue at sunrise. 

I wasn’t aware of the sun rising though since the morning was so grey; it just went from black to a lighter shade of black. The rain was still falling, but not quite in the monsoon fashion experienced overnight. I quickly packed up my tent and climbed up to  the West Highland Way trail. I had a quick look around to see if I could find anything that might explain last night's pan-banging, but could only find rock, water and earth. It looked like it would remain an unexplained mystery. 

The plan for today was to head for the Kingshouse Hotel and get some breakfast and hopefully dry out a bit. This would set me up for what was supposed to be the hardest section of the West Highland Way: the Devil’s Staircase. This is a zig-zag climb up to the top of a pass. My 38 year old memory told me that it wasn’t actually that bad, the last time I walked it. I hadn’t walked it in rain though. After the climb, there would then be a long descent to Kinlochleven where I hoped to camp at the campsite. 

Rannoch Moor

I looked back along the trail as soon as I set off and spotted half a dozen people following me about a quarter of a mile away. They must have wildcamped too. I called this the Dutch Group since when I talked to them later, they were all from Holland. It wasn’t a nice morning at all. Mist hung low over the hills and rain blew into my face. My 1980s guide sums up these conditions nicely for the moor.
In fine weather with the lark overhead and the bog-cotton snowy-white by tiny, calm pools that reflect the blue sky, the Moor belies its reputation as a desolate wilderness. In rain or snow with low cloud driving before a gale it tends to promote the conviction that Hell need not be hot. 

The trail across the moor reached its highest point and then started swinging to the northwest. Through rain spattered spectacles I could just make out in the far distance a collection of buildings that would be the Kingshouse Hotel. There was nothing for it but to plod on through the rain and gloom towards it.

On my left, the Glencoe Mountain Resort gradually appeared with its chair lift up the northern flank of Meall a Bhuiridh. I had fond memories from my childhood going up on the chair lift. It felt quite an exotic adventure in those days. There was always that element of danger as the chairs rattled over the runners on the support pylons. I didn’t think many would be using its services today though, not least because you’d probably only see mist once you were up there. At last, I left the stone road and reached a tarmac one.  I followed it until I reached the A82, an alien highway heading towards Glencoe on my left and Rannoch Moor on my right. I should have had a magnificent view of the Great Shepherd (Buchaille Etive Mor), a massive pyramid of rock at the entrance of Glencoe, but it was cloaked in mist. Fifteen minutes later, I approached the various buildings of the Kingshouse Hotel and my sanctuary from the weather for the next hour or so. 

Kingshouse Hotel

I have to confess, I did have some doubts about stopping at the Kingshouse Hotel for refreshments. After all, Dorothy Wordsworth didn’t give it the best of reviews when she visited the place in 1803 on a tour with her brother, William:
Never did I see such a miserable, such a wretched place.
Obviously, Dorothy and William had never suffered a tour of Lancashire. Options were limited though and I figured that ‘needs must.’ 

The hotel had something of the atmosphere of that one in The Shining as I staggered through its large front vestibule to the reception.
‘Is there any chance of getting food and drink here, please?’ I asked the young lady who was peering in horror at me over the large reception desk. Without saying anything, she pointed to a door on my right and I dragged myself towards it leaving a trail of water behind me like an oversized slug. This took me straight through to the Way Inn that was packed with walkers having their breakfasts. I dumped my rucksack on the floor and started to take my waterproofs off. I then went up to the bar and ordered their Vegetarian Breakfast and a coffee.
‘The mushrooms are off’ said the fellow behind the bar. I waited an uncomfortable few seconds to see whether the ‘off mushrooms’ might be replaced by some additional beans, or maybe some fried tomatoes, or failing that a reduction in price. Nothing was forthcoming. He came back with a paper plate with two vegetarian sausages, a dollop of scrambled eggs and a dollop of beans. There seemed to be more paper plate than food. It wasn’t quite the hearty breakfast that I’d envisaged as I’d tramped across Rannoch Moor through the rain this morning. I took my paper plate and its meagre contents, together with the small cardboard cup of coffee, to the nearest table. There were a number of people squeezed around the table and I didn’t recognise them at first. It was The Germans! They hunched up and made room for me. They asked how I’d got on with my wildcamp overnight and I told them about the pan-banging episode. Together with my inadvertent ‘Sieg Heil’ Hitler salute to them yesterday, I could see them raising eyebrows to each other, putting two and two together, and figuring that I was about as mad as they come. They'd stayed in the Walker’s accommodation at the hotel overnight and had a great time. Their destination for the day was Kinlochleven too and I figured I’d catch up with them again before the day was out. They left to get packed up after I'd emptied my plate of its contents and then held it vertically to lick off the bean juice. I reckon I could have had three or four of the Kingshouse’s vegetarian breakfasts and still remained hungry.   

The Devil's Staircase

I joined a long line of walkers heading along the glen to the start of the Devil’s Staircase. Where did all these walkers come from? I’d only seen a handful tramp across the Rannoch Moor section. Had they just bussed it to Kingshouse? The rain seemed even worse now than earlier this morning. The Great Shepherd was still hunkered down under its cloak. I talked to an elderly couple from Phoenix, Arizona.  
‘You’ve swapped your sunshine for this rain?’ I asked them.
They looked at me with watery eyes and faces of regret. 

There was a wooden monument at the start of the Devil’s Staircase. The name is thought to have originated from soldiers working on roads around here in the early 1700s and who found the climb difficult.
‘Maybe they too had only been fuelled by a Kingshouse's vegetarian breakfast’ I thought. The top of the climb is 548m high, but you start at around 300m and so it wasn’t a big deal really. I got my head down and started hauling. The zigs would take me first into the rain and wind, before the zags sheltered me from it. Before I knew it I was at the summit cairn on the top of the pass. I took my camera out to take some photos.’
‘YEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH.’ A fellow walked by me with fists pumping the air like Rocky in that famous scene on the steps of the  Philadelphia Museum of Art’s. It turned out that this overexcited chap was a member of the Dutch Group who had followed me across Rannoch Moor this morning. I chatted with two of them and found that some of its members were struggling a bit. They confirmed that they’d wildcamped near Ba Bridge too.
‘Where are you heading tonight?’ I asked them.
‘We will regroup somewhere in Kinlochleven and dry out. Probably we will wildcamp in the woods beyond Kinlochleven' one of them told me.
‘I’d thought about camping there too, but given the rainy conditions I think I’m going to opt for a campsite in the village’ I replied.
‘There may be more protection from the rain in the trees’ he responded. I left them at the cairn to wait for their friends and started on the long descent to Kinlochleven. 

The Long Descent

It was nearly 5 miles to Kinlochleven and it felt  like it. The trail was well made though and it made for a fast descent. Mountain Bikers also used the path and I had to make way a couple of times for them to motor through. I dropped through the mist and the views opened up somewhat into the valley. The tops of the hills were still in mist though and the light rain was continuous. 

The Blackwater Reservoir was over to the east. A country with so much freshwater already, it does make you wonder why they wanted to catch even more. The reason was to provide a power source for the aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven. The reservoir was built between 1905 and 1909 and employed up to 3,000 navvies. Materials were sent up to the site using an overhead rope railway system known as the blondin. It is said that it wasn’t unusual for the navvies to tip the buckets with long poles in order to access the beer and food it contained. Not surprisingly, it was a hard life. A few bodies were later found on the moors between the reservoir and Kingshouse. Presumably, they were going there to drink some whisky rather than fill their bellies with their vegetarian breakfast. 

From the penstock, it was a 300m drop down the hillside to the generators in the aluminium works. The West Highland Way now followed the half dozen large diameter pipes down the hillside. One of the benefits of this hydro electric scheme was that Kinlochleven was the first village in the world where every house had an electricity connection and consequently it became known as the ‘The Electric Village.’ The aluminium works closed for business in June 2000 and now all the electricity is fed into the National Grid. The trail merged with a forestry road and this made for an even easier descent into the village. 

Kinlochleven

The forestry road brought me down to the rear of the old aluminium works. The trail went right next to the camping area of the Blackwater campsite and I could see that the grass looked reasonably well drained. The rain had stopped too and it looked like I’d timed it perfectly to quickly get my tent pitched before it started again. Things were looking up. I went into their reception to pay for the pitch. I’d arrived at 2pm and they wouldn’t let anybody pitch until 3pm. Hmmm. I decided to take a wander into the village to see if I could procure any grub. 

A vivid memory of my 1987 West Highland Way trip was calling into a local shop after my descent into the village. It had been a particularly hot day and I’d been very thirsty. I’d picked up a bottle of milk (yes, it was in a bottle) and paid for it. As soon as I left the shop, I opened it up and took a large swig. It was a rancid sludge. I spat it all out over the pavement and was nearly sick. The shopkeeper must have had a right laugh. Curiously, I remember that the shop had been near a building that had a masonic square and compass above the door. I made sure to remember that detail so that I’d never enter that shop and make the same mistake again. 38 years later and I didn’t come across the shop. I did find the Co-Op though and so I stocked up on food. On my way back to the campsite, I met The Germans. They gave me a Hob-Knob bar as a reward for conquering the Devil’s Staircase. This was the last time that I saw the group. 

I returned to the Blackwater campsite and pitched my tent. I’d timed my return with another break in the showers and so I was able to pitch before the deluge started again. It was a reasonably good campsite that had a drying room too. I put my clothes in there in the full knowledge that if it rained like this tomorrow they’d be saturated within the first 10 minutes of the walk. 

I reviewed the faces of the walkers as they came into the campsite. Some of them I recognised as far back as Loch Lomond. One or two, from Tyndrum, but most seemed new. I wondered whether I’d caught them up or whether they had caught me up.

Weather wise it had been a dreadful day on the West Highland Way. That was a shame since the views of the surrounding mountains would have been stunning. I should even have been able to see Ben Nevis from the top of the Devil’s Staircase. It felt like the West Highland Way was coming to a conclusion and indeed, tomorrow would be my last day on the trail (well, sort of). Hopefully I would get a good night’s sleep and not be woken by any pan banging.