A leisurely day again today but still over 10,000 steps. It’s amazing how much walking you have to do if you don’t use vehicular transport at all. Much of this is from collecting our clean laundry from the Ben Nevis industrial estate just out of town then sauntering back into the town centre for lunch.
We get back up the hill to Burnbank and then start doing our prep for the next stage. We determine and book our accommodation but there will be three nights sleeping out before Ullapool. There are a couple of bothies, but it is stag stalking season, so they might be out of bounds. Either way, we will need our food and cooking equipment.
We check out the shops and facilities at our inhabited stops and work out what we are missing: one sachet of dehydrated food and a spare gas canister. Fortunately, there’s an outdoor shop when we reach Ullapool, so we can replenish supplies there. I also do a bit of work organising for a conference where I’m presenting just after I go back to work. Adobe editing on my mobile is an interesting/infuriating experience. Then it’s off to buy the missing items from Ellis Brigham’s outdoor shop.
I download the relevant Ordnance Survey maps for the trip onto my phone, as data access may be limited at times, and Rich ensures that the OS GPS works with data turned off to save battery life. In any case, there may well not be any data to be found. Next, we try out all our equipment, so we can set up camp in bad weather. The wild camps will be miles from civilisation so checks and back ups are crucial, as well as reassuring. After all, the ‘Cape Wrath Trail’ is not a designated official trail, is not waymarked and is often pathless.
Lastly, there’s just time for a cup of tea and an Eccles cake while we look at the optical illusion stag picture in our room. Which way is the stag looking?
