Days 9-14

Day 9 was the first day that Stuart and I went our own ways.  It was also the 1st Munro of the journey and I was lucky enough to have Richard Bannister with me.  

The navigation should be a bit more straightforward from here onwards, in many respects. Having done a lot of compass work in preparation for the trip it hadn't really come in useful whilst we'd been running on roads or through forests.  I was looking forward to setting a bearing and trying to stick to it.  

We've had a relatively gentle start since Peel Fell; although the borders had a lot of climbing within them, most days were shorter than 15 miles.  By the time we were running through the central belt on roads we had a far greater mileage but there wasn't so much climbing.  From this point onwards there is both.  

Stuart and I had reccied the first part of day 9 so I knew what to expect.  Having run along the side of Loch Lomond on the West Highland Way numerous times and felt it was tough with all the undulations, I can confirm, going a little further east onto the watershed is substantially worse! 

The ground here is incredibly boggy and tussocky as well as the hills being very rolling and indistinct.  This makes it hard to gauge progress although that's maybe good as it's incredibly slow through the terrain.  

I've been trying to keep a daily tab on how many times I fall over but Richard and I lost count between us and felt we had to re-define a fall so we could keep track; A fall includes hands as well as knees on the ground.  And we still lost count...

On the plus side the weather was beautiful.  Apart from a couple of heavy showers we had great views. Ben Lomond took far longer an expected to appear but it finally did so, revealing a snake of people up the path.  After hours of only Richard for company it felt almost city like!

What looked on the map like an easy finish to the day was interrupted by an innocuous looking kilometre under some power lines, leading to the road.  This was an awful tramp through particularly lumpy heather and managed to put a dampner on the day.  

The following day was considerably tougher with 4 Munros; Ben Chabair, An Caisteal, Beinn a' Chroin and Cruach Ardrain.  Stuart Chalmers joined us for the day and to make it a bit tougher for himself he ran to the Inversnaid bunkhouse, where we stayed, from Bein Glas farm!

We were in cloud for most of the day so had to keep a close eye on the GPS and maps.  It was really nice to share the navigation and discuss route options - should we stick to the path or avoid extra descent by cross-countrying it a bit?  The paths always led us astray, despite being so enjoyable to run on.

Occasionally the cloud lifted and we could see where we were heading but it was mentally exhausting getting round this loop.  It was the biggest climbing day of the trip so far with between 2000 and 3000 metres of climbing, depending who's watch you believe! 

Day 12 has perhaps my favourite day to date.  Although the first 5 miles were through difficult terrain the midges kept us going and we got to the Munros quickly.  

This day we had Beinn Dubhcraig, Ben Oss and Ben Lui.  From the top of the first Munro the cloud thinned out so that we could see our route spread out in front of us.  For the rest of the day the cloud swirled lightly around us and we had plenty of blue sky and sunshine which was very energising.  

I've had to turn away from Ben Lui a couple of times in the past because of the weather; it has a very exposed descent and would have been precarious without good visibility.  In the conditions we had however, it was stunning.  

It was only when I got to a shower I remembered the midges from earlier.  My skin was like a midge graveyard and a crowd of them had managed to work into the seams of my clothes and nibble little lines around my limbs! 

Over the weekend we had more company.  Angela, Ruth and Lorna came to join us.  Angela didn't fancy running with us but it was lovely to have her company in the evenings.  

We had another stunning day (apart from the hail!) and it was remarkably easy going over Beinn Achaladair and Beinn A' Chreachinn.  The descent was the only point I felt Ruth and Lorna got a real sense of the watershed, running over bog and bracken.  We also had to make a big river crossing to get to the support van and Ruth managed to fall in, much to our amusement.  It was such a tricky descent that I lost count of our falls again but I'm pretty sure that Ruth won.

Lorna was kind enough to bring her massage couch with her and gave me a great massage at the end of the day.  Just what I needed.

It was just Ruth and I running on Sunday. Richard had originally planned to do 4 days of the watershed challenge.  I'm not sure if it was my company or the lure of the Watershed but he decided to come back for another 4 days and used Sunday to go back home and collect more kit.  

It was a very easy day and a great chance for me to get my head around the logistics for the next few days which will be unsupported.  These last few days have been what I hoped for from their journey - a brilliant mix of climbing and terrain.  It's never been too much of one thing, though I'm ready to get onto a new map sheet after being in the same one for 3 days now!  Navigation has been pretty successful which is encouraging.

It's not the greatest selection of photos I'm afraid, I've had real trouble doing this at all and Tom has had to help from home, without access to my photos! Just downloaded the blogger app so things may improve now.