Glencoe Mountain Resort to Kinlochleven
10 miles
1624 ft
Did I say yesterday that we’d perhaps begun to get a little overconfident about finishing our last couple of days on the West Highland Way?
Maybe it was that I thought we’d mostly faced the variety of challenges that might arise on our hike that I wasn’t too worried about what was to come. Surely in the last couple days, we might just encounter more of the same challenges we had already faced.
But a couple of new challenges made today, if not our hardest day, at the very least, our most interesting.
To start, no one woke up very rested in our microlodge. When the light came through the window into the cabin, Patti said she’d never in her life been so glad to see the end of a night and I had to agree with her. In addition to the obviously uncomfortable pencil thin mattresses and lack of pillows on our bunks, the cabin was overly stuffy and hot. But we couldn’t open the door overnight because of the midges.
The midge, or noseeum as we call them in Arkansas, is infamous on the West Highland Way. Anytime you tell someone in Scotland that you’re going hiking in the summer, they will tell you to be aware of the midges.
In warm, still air, these swarming, tiny black flies are a plague to hikers and campers.
I have experienced them before in several years of hiking in Scotland. Or shall we say more accurately, I thought I had experienced them before.
Last July, Taido and I brought a group to the Isle of Skye and we had midges outside our little cabins in the evenings. When we lived in Scotland, I can remember hikes in the summer when we would sit down to eat lunch and then have to pack up and move on because we had stopped in a spot full of ‘midgies.’
But in all my previous experiences with the midge, we could spray some big spray or move on down the trail a little ways and get away from them. I experienced spots where the midges were bad.
Here on the West Highland Way, on some of our snack breaks, we’ve had a few biting midges, especially near Loch Lomond in places where the air was still. But we were able to move on from them and find places to stop where they weren’t bothering us.
Well apparently (and somewhat miraculously, I suppose) in all my previous acquaintance with Mr. Midge, I hadn’t truly encountered the midges about which I’ve been warned.
Because the plague of midges that arrived the day after the most unusually warm day that Scotland has had all summer wasn’t just right outside our cabin. They had settled into the entire valley and were waiting to devour us.
I was hoping that as soon as we got away from our cabin, they would improve. My first clue that the midges weren’t only outside our little hut was when our friend from Germany said she had never set her tent up so fast before because of the midges. She described them as a black fur covering her whole body, which gives me the willies even as I type it.
Breakfast doesn’t begin until 8am at the Glencoe Mountain Resort, but by 7, we couldn’t stand to be in our cabin another minute. I had already tried to take a cup of coffee outside to enjoy the morning air but was attacked immediately and had to go back into the stiflingly hot hut.
We were just under two miles from the Kingshouse Hotel. We decided to take our chances that we’d be able to have breakfast there. So we packed up quickly, coated ourselves in repellent and made for hotel.
Here’s the thing about midges. If there is any wind at all, they disappear, and there was absolutely no wind this morning. The clouds had covered the sky overnight but they were just sitting still.
When there is no wind, you can sometimes get away from the midges by creating your own wind with movement, by walking very fast.
I marched us as quickly as possible down the road to the Kingshouse Hotel, where we discovered mercifully that they will sell campers breakfast for 10 pounds. It was such a relief to get out of the midges for a minute. We all filled up on eggs and toast, porridge and coffee. We watched others wander inside, clearly chased in by the bugs. There’s no way you’d try to cook your own breakfast in a camp outside in that mess. Your food would be covered.
The Kingshouse Hotel sits nestled down in the valley, so again, I was very hopeful that we could quickly get ourselves out of the cesspool of midges and then enjoy our day of slowly meandering the rest of our ten miles into Kinlochleven.
After all, there was no rain. It wasn’t cold. And the scenery was incredible. We were walking in Glencoe for crying out loud. We needed to enjoy it.
From the hotel, I began to lead us in what could only be described as a death march away from the midges.
I walked so fast that they stopped bothering me, but if I stopped to check if the gals were behind me or to snap a photo, I’d get covered up, so I marched on.
My first clue that the combination of midges and a sleepless night might be making me a little snippy (an understatement) is when I tried to overtake a tourist in front of me who asked me to stop and take her picture. She was driving around and had just stopped her car on the road to walk a little of the trail. I know this because after I snapped her photo, which I thought was very gracious of me under the circumstances, she tried to ask me exactly where the Devil’s Staircase was and how long the path went along the valley before it started to climb up.
Lord if I know, lady and I’m not pulling out my map now. I’ve already stopped longer than I want to. Can’t you see we are both covered in midges here!??!
I stepped off the trail to get around her as she was blocking the trail, and left her standing in there trying to decide if she had time to walk all the way to The Devil’s Staircase.
I thought as I marched on that maybe I needed to keep my mouth closed this morning for more reasons than just to keep the midges from flying in.
Finally, maybe about a mile later, the path started to curve up to the right and away from the road. The trail was rocky, but dry, so I still marched quickly as, disappointingly, the midges did not disappear as we climbed. If anything, they were even more drawn to us as we sweated up the mountain. My glasses were fogging up from the heat coming off of me, but still I marched on. I glanced back around every bend making sure Rhonda and Patti were still coming but I could not stop to wait on them without getting covered up.
About halfway up, I passed a few hikers coming from the other direction and said quickly as I passed:
Please tell me it gets better on the other side of this hill.
Unfortunately not.
Their reply totally deflated me. We were all hoping a big gust of wind would hit us once we climbed all the way out of the valley.
Surely getting up higher was going to provide relief from the bugs and the muggy weather.
Nope.
I began to worry that we couldn’t keep up our pace much longer. And at the rate we were going, we’d be in Kinlochleven well before noon. It was Sunday so who even knows what would be open and we couldn’t check into the West Highland Lodge until 3pm.
Those are problems for future me, I thought. In this moment all I can do is keep going, keep pushing up this hill.
The top of the Devil’s Staircase, which is really just a series of switchbacks, is the highest point on the West Highland Way clocking in at 1850 feet.
We quickly reached the top, but there was no real stopping to take it all in as the midges were still swarming. As I looked into the valley on the other side, the clouds were also sitting there just on that side just as still as can be. Not moving. No air was moving.
And so onward we marched.
The path going down was a bit less steep so it was easier to go fast, and since I was expending less energy than when pushing up, I stopped sweating so much that I couldn’t see out of my glasses. A tiny reward for making it up and over the Devil’s Staircase.
Finally, about 7 miles into our 10 mile hike, a merciful breeze began to blow. The clouds that had been nestled at the bottom of the valley all morning began to move. In less than a minute we were walking in fog. I couldn’t see behind me to make sure the gals were still there, so I stopped to wait and the midges, while still present, were not as relentless.
Thank you Lord.
I was able to wait until Patti and Rhonda appeared behind me, all of us laughing with delight, before I felt bites again. The back of Rhonda’s neck was covered in little black dots from swatting midges that were attracted to her sweat.
The wind continued to pick up and we could slow down a little bit without the fear of being eaten alive. Thank goodness. The temperature is supposed to drop significantly tomorrow so I guess that cool front was finally beginning to blow in.
We were all tired before we started this morning, and then we’d pulled out get-up-and-go we didn’t know we had in order to run away from the midges all morning. So it was with much relief that we slowed to a normal walking pace for the last three miles into town.
We entered a wood just before the town and the midges seemed to be even less present, more like the midge level we had lived with already on the earlier days of the trail, manageable.
We walked into town at 12:30pm.
We went to see if we could check in early, just for kicks and because we were desperate for showers. Of course we were too early but maaaaaybe we could get in by 2:30. So we found a pub that opened at 1. While we waited for it to open we went to the grocery store across the street and grabbed some fruit And snacks for later. We were the first ones in the door at the pub where we collapsed on the couches and ordered cold drinks.
In the bathroom we washed our faces and tried to spot clean up the best we could until we could shower. I was pulling bugs out of my hair and out from behind my ears. It was disgusting.
After we caught our breath, we ordered sandwiches and were able to actually talk. I apologized for marching the girls so hard all morning and they were like, what else could we do?
Also I apologized for vastly underestimating how bad the midges could be. Lots of people buy and wear mosquito nets, although we mostly have only seen people wearing them who are camping, so they can fix their food outside of their tents. None of us had felt the need for a net and honestly they have always seemed a little silly to me.
Never in all three years of living and hiking in Scotland have I ever experienced midges that bad for that long on a trail. I feel I have finally been initiated and I understand the warnings.
At 2:15, I left Rhonda and Patti in the pub to check and see if we could please please get in to shower. We were staying at the West Highland Lodge which is the overflow hostel for Blackwater Campground and Hostel, which you pass as you are walking into town. Because the two properties are run together, you check in to West Highland Lodge at Blackwater.
When I walked back to Backwater and the host said we could check in, it was as if she gave me the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I ran back to the pub waving the keys in the air.
We’re in!
15 minutes later, after we huffed and puffed up the hill to our hostel, because of course it’s above town, we stripped off all our buggy clothes and ran for the showers. They were the best showers in the whole wide world.
And our 4-bunk room is the best room in the whole wide world. It has a window that opens with a screen over it. We flung it open and let that breeze blow in. We have pillows! And mattresses! We can breathe!
I washed out my buggy clothes and hung them on the clothesline outside where the wind was now blowing so hard that there was not a sign of a midge. I sat down at a picnic table outside to drink the water I carried but didn’t drink on the trail and wondered if I had dreamed the whole thing up.
How could I possibly be enjoying being outside again so soon? Nothing was biting me. And there was no evidence on my skin that anything had bit me. The midge bites don’t really leave marks or itch later, at least not for me. In fact, the biting isn’t the worst of the midge swarm. The worst is the way they are in your face and you feel like you can’t see or breathe, which is of course why one might carry a mosquito net.
This morning I was afraid I would never want to be outside in Scotland again and now I was sitting in a quiet courtyard. The sun was even shining. Rhonda and Patti came outside and I read them the description of tomorrow’s trail as they half-listened and half-dozed in the sun.
Then we went inside and made cups of tea that we drank on big couches in the hostel lounge. (The common areas in this hostel are lovely.)
At 5pm we wandered back into town for an early dinner at The Bothy Bar. (We planned to be asleep by 9.) The gals had pizza and I had a veggie burger and chips. We all shared some of the best onion rings I’ve ever had outside of the South.
Then we walked back to the pub we’d been in earlier for a nightcap. It was very busy but a group of locals let us share their table. We got to talking to them and of course we told them about our midgy walk. One of them said the weather is going to break tomorrow. It will be much cooler but we will have rain again. They told us about some of their favorite places to visit in the far north of Scotland.
Rhonda and I had gotten some different whiskies to try and share, and one of the locals left and came back with a dram of something he wanted us to try, a favorite of his. Old Putney 12-year from the very north of Scotland, in Wick, he told us after we had tried it.
It was our favorite of the night and when we look for a bottle to take home or see it on a shelf, it will remind us of the friendly neighborhood pub in Kinlochleven and the way a day can end in delight no matter how it starts.
Or maybe it was so delightful because of how it started.
