West Highland Way Day 6: Inveroran -> Kinlochleven

My review of our nearly 19-mile day from the Inveronan Hotel to Kinlochleven in under 12 hours.

1. The Inveroran Hotel
Have I ever stayed at a hotel that had a more spectacularly scenic setting, more thoughtful and attentive service (especially considering their staffing shortage*); more jaw-dropping food presentation (and serving size, and flavor profile); a more collegial dining room (we were all ogling each others’ dinners when they came out, this is not an exaggeration); and local fauna with better comic timing^¥? No. No, I have not. If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood** of the Inveroran Hotel, do yourself a favor and find a way to stay a day or two. 15/10 stars.

2. The Weather
The weather has been almost ridiculously perfect every day so far, which just isn’t fair — it never doesn’t rain for 5 days in a row in Scotland. Our streak had to end at some point. But that day was not today. It was gloriously sunny, breezy, and perfect again all day today. (Apparently this registered as unpleasantly too warm for summer hiking for the locals, but it was like 68 and breezy and mostly sunny for the 19 hours of sunlight so literally I don’t know what could have been better.) 15/10 stars.

Day 6 Inveroran to Kinlochleven

3. The Scenery/The Route
Today’s hike took us up to Rannoch Moor (which is fun to say in a Scottish accent; try it with a good running start rolling the “r”, I dare you!) and then through Glen Coe. Big, huge open spaces and looming, green-sided, rock-capped mountains. Very dramatic, very Scottish-y. It was also for the first time pretty wilderness-y and away from roads and towns (for the most part), which I also really liked; it felt wild and rugged and open. Loved it. The high point took us up and over “Devil’s Staircase,” which was (per usual) somewhat under-rated in terms of difficulty, easier for us going up than on the coming down-side. 12/10 stars.

4. The Trail Surface
For long stretches today (and many days to date) the trail has used old “drovers” and/or military roads. Which is fine; we love a good re-use/recycle trail. But the thing is, ye olde drovers and the 18th century military both apparently were fond of using for their road base an amalgam of irregular, approximately fist-sized cobbles and large gravel, all sort of loosely strewn and piled about, and it has been little improved upon since. It might have been the state of the art in road-bed technology in 1746 or whatever, but it is not so much fun for hiking on by mile 11 or so; it’s loose and uneven and ankle-roll-y and requires quite a bit of concentration to keep your footing on, and plus is basically coarse scree, so if you’re going up- or down-hill you’re always kind of sliding a bit on it. It wouldn’t be so bad for a few miles but after half a day it does start to get aggravating, and at the end of a long day it’s unendurably irritating. 3/10 stars.

5. The Feet
Nancy has had a small breakthrough in blister management, so we had a much better day on that front. Still, into double-digit mileage everything hurts, and both of us are still in fairly decent pain by mid-afternoon. Would consider field amputation but they are fundamentally still accomplishing the getting of us from Point A to Point B, so we’ll hang on to them for the time being, considering the dearth of better options. 3/10 stars.

6. The Entertainment
For much of today I helped pass the time by narrating for Nancy the plot of Les Misérables, and then singing along with the cast recording. I managed to draw this exercise out over maybe 4.5 hours of hiking time (which, if you thought the stage performance was long…). Nancy added some brilliant textual analysis and layers of context that I — despite probably 192,045 total listens through the soundtrack in my life — had somehow missed, so that was genuinely fun and rewarding. Timing-wise, I think I kind of nailed the stage direction, since [spoiler] Valjean was being welcomed to heaven by Fantine and Eponine [/spoiler] right as we were rolling in to Kinlochleven. 6/10 stars.

* Quite a number of places we’ve been have complained of staffing shortages due to Brexit issues (thanks, Boris)

** This is a little joke, you see the Inveroran Hotel is almost comically not in the neighborhood of anything at all (that’s someone else’s photo but it gives you the sense of it). But if you every find yourself within maybe 200k I’d say it’s worth a trip, it was really outstanding.

¥ As we were sitting in the dining room comparing stories with the other guests about the majestic, many-pointed stag we had seen upon our arrival lounging …magestic-like beneath one of the Inveroran’s romantic old trees, they showed us a photo on their phone of that same stag goofing off in exchange for some snacks earlier in the day, upending all our notions of the beast’s wildness and nobility. Just at that moment, the critter’s brother comes waltzing down the street in front of the dining room perfectly framed in the front window. Must’ve heard us talking about them and decided to totally ham it up. AND THEN I noticed after posting this with its comment about Inverorans’ faunas’ comic timing that the random photo I’d pulled of the hotel in the footnote above has an Easter egg in it I swear I didn’t search for that or even notice it until I was rereading this the next day.