This was our last hiking day and it was rather short. In the afternoon we had to leave for Glasgow because our flight waited on us the following day. From the top of the mountain we even saw the burial ground we passed by two days ago. It’s the last picture and it’s the place next to the river with the huge trees.
So this meant saying goodbye to the mountains and to walking everyday. It was great! We’ll come back!
After that nice foot bath the path left the shore of the river and became intense and steep and when I was ready to take a stop on the top of a hill we had this most amazing view down a huge valley: A gigantic waterfall fell from the mountains down to a green valley with a meandering clear river, some colored points caused by tents, birds singing and and butterflies surrounding us.
We had to leave our cute clamping hut this morning and woke up in the rain but when we left we saw some glorious lights over Loch Ness. This day we hiked through another magic forest along the Caledonian Canal. Just follow the canal from Fort Augustus.
Fort Augustus is interesting for the Caledonian Canal Staircase Locks. Otherwise it is very overcrowded with tourists. But we had a wonderful day with a little bit of fog and with great lights which enlightened the flat landscape around the canal very beautifully.
Behind our camping site a small magic path lead to the Great Glen Way which brought us to Invermoriston a small town with two old bridges next to Loch Ness.
On Culloden Moor on the 16th of April 1746, the English Army of George II under the lead of Bonnie Prince Charlie defeated the weakend Catholic Jacobites in less than two hours. On this ground, where the soldiers of both sides sunk into the mud just until their hips, the Highland Clan Culture came to its end forever.
When visiting places like Culloden Battlefields everyone must become aware of the futility of war. But only nearly 300 years later, on the site where it happened and with a lot of research done by experts, the meaninglessness becomes palpable. Greedy, deluded and immature leaders and a succession of bad decisions led to thousands of dead soldiers in the fog of this place and millions who suffered the consequences of war, years and centuries after it.
Like in all other wars.
A day with classic Scottish weather and a lot of beautiful landscape around Inverness. We started directly from our boat on the Caledonian Canal and made a big tour to the country side.
On a rainy day we went sight seeing.
We made our way through the mountains that day. The ground was wet and swampy and we had some difficulties finding our way, because where there was a path once, there was now a tiny creek. But as always the landscape was vast and beautiful and on a plateau we saw a boothy already from far away. We didn’t know at the time that something like that exists here and we were quite staggered by the welcoming atmosphere around and inside of it. There was a guestbook and we saw that there have been many international overnight guests during the last days.
We had a short walk to the beach next to Eilean Mor today. Unfortunately the tide has been high so we weren’t able to cross over to the tiny Islands with partly sandy beaches we saw from above. It was just before fathers day (in Germany) and I thought a lot of my Dad these days. I remembered when he taught me how to let a flat stone jump in a lake when I was a kid and also that I wasn’t able to do it. But he didn’t give up and eventually I succeeded once or twice out of hundreds of throws. Today I just took a stone between to fingers how he showed me and threw it into the sea. It jumped four times. I don’t need to visit your grave, Dad, to be aware that you’re here somehow. In me.
hikeminded 