Walking through Glen Nevis

Today we wake up with a warm sun and it is wonderful to have breakfast on our terrace. It is good that it is such a nice weather because today we want to take a long walk through Glen Nevis, a valley just south of the Ben Nevis, the highest mountain of Great Britain. We have already walked there a bit before, but then we did not get very far.

A single track road takes us to the parking spot where we first have to climb a lot. There are plenty of warning signs that the first part is not easy and that is true, sometimes you have to climb more than you walk along a path. And everywhere are streams and sometimes waterfalls so that it can also be quite slippery on the rocks. We are not experienced walkers so we take it easy and have taken drinks and food for a picnic along the way.

Personally, I have to take my muscles into account, if I exercise too much, I can suffer from them for weeks and that is why we have taken all day for this trip. And the walk is too good to quickly walk through. After a lot of clambering through the forest and along a deep gorge we finally reach the valley. On the right you can see the Steal Falls in the background, one of the three highest waterfalls in Scotland.

The path becomes more even and a wide valley opens up for us where the distances turn out to be much larger than we think. First we take a rest at the river and then over a rickety bridge (in 2010, one of the cables snaps and the bridge is repaired), after which we seem to run straight towards the Steal Falls. But because of the vastness we are still a long way away. The waterfall lies in a kind of bend where the valley turns to the left and only around the bend we see the real vastness of the valley.

A peaceful landscape unfolds before us and I am secretly glad that I do not have to clamber and climb anymore. Occasionally we see other hikers in the distance but on the whole it is only wide and peaceful. There are even no sheep!

Of course, Teije wants to climb all the rocks (boys will be boys!) and jumps on every big rock he sees. Meanwhile I am looking for a spot without too many midges for a picnic and soon I find a spot along the river. It is beautiful weather as we do not often experience in Scotland. When we left the car it was 27 degrees and because of the walk of more than 2 hours we did not really get any cooler.

We have to walk back the whole piece too, so after the picnic we don't go much further, but if you want you can continue for hours. We are pretty exhausted when we are back at the car hours later. For unexperienced walkers like we are it has been quite a long hike. So now first just drive around and find ourselves a terrace for a cup of coffee.

We go to Spean Bridge where we take a another short walk, we are apparently full of energy today, at least I surprise myself. Of course, the fine weather also helps and we have hardly had any problems with annoying midges (vicious mosquitoes). It is quite late when we are back at our log cabin where we can still sit in the sun for a while, it is one of the longest day of the year.