Scotland 2025
October 3-19, 2025

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Friday – Inverarnan to Tyndrum
12.5 miles / 20 km

While the bed was comfortable, the room was much too warm and I wasn’t able to sleep as well as I’d hoped. While I wasn’t sleeping, I did enjoy listening to the sound of water from somewhere outside. It sounded like rain, but I knew that it wasn’t supposed to be raining – at least not that hard. I assumed that it was one of the many flowing streams in the area, and it sounded nice.

Once I got up and looked outside, I saw that it was misty but bright, and the Beinglas grounds were already bustling with activity. We had another great breakfast, as part of the tour package was breakfast every morning, which was a great way to start the day, even if it was always too much food. I had hoped to get fit on this trip, but between the filling breakfasts, the mid-day snacks, and the big dinners, this wasn’t going to happen!

After dropping off our bags in the dedicated “bag room”, the three of us started our day together. That lasted all of about fifteen minutes before Dan left us. It was easy walking and the weather was once again perfect hiking weather. Eventually I left Petra behind, as she liked to stop and take breaks that included pulling food out of her pack and sitting down to eat. I couldn’t even imagine eating again, and I preferred to keep walking.

At one point I met a southbound solo hiker. Her pack was about as big as she was, and she was regretting bringing so much with her. She was a little jealous of my light day pack, and we chatted briefly on the open trail about how her train to the trail’s start had been cancelled due to the storm, and she was doing the stages of the full trail out of order.

I had been walking on my own for a couple of hours, enjoying the time alone and in my head, when I saw Dan waiting for me at a distant gate. I approached and we then walked together for the rest of the day. It was nice to have a companion to walk with again, even if we didn’t talk much. The landscape had changed considerably since I met up with Dan: the comprehensive pine plantations that are all over Scotland are there for one reason: to be cut down. We were walking through an area that had been cut recently and the devastation of the stumps and mud was not pleasant to walk through. I saw a couple of song birds flitting among the debris and it made me realize just how little wildlife I had seen so far on this hike. A couple of birds, a waterfowl or two, the pheasants – but no mammals so far. This was really surprising to me, as I expected to at least see some squirrels and even evidence of deer, or foxes, or (be still my heart!) a Scottish Wildcat!

I mentioned to Dan how I was sure that he thought of me when he passed the dead sheep on the trail before I caught up to him. “Dead sheep? What dead sheep?” I looked at him incredulously. The sheep had been just a pile of bones, but it was directly on the trail and (in my opinion) very hard to miss. But Dan missed it, nonetheless. It went back to an old story that we have from one of our first motorcycle rides together.

Dan had just started to ride and was focused heavily on the “riding” part, but not necessarily what he was riding through. We had been on the road for a couple of hours and when we stopped for a break, I said to him
“Did you notice the birds sitting on the fence posts in the morning light, their wings outstretched to catch the sun?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, how about the tree on the side of the road that had dozens of shoes hung over its branches?”
“No.”
“Oh. I do wonder what happened that the car went off the road and was sitting in the ditch.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“At least tell me that you saw the Civil War reenactment camp!”
“Oh now you’re just pulling my leg.” – but I wasn’t. There really was a Civil War reenactment camp on the outskirts of a town we had ridden through, complete with tents and costumes and horses. We both laughed at this, and it comes up once in a while. It came up now, when I asked me about the dead sheep. How could he have missed that?

We were getting close to our destination: the trail we were on was more like a forest service road. It was wide, smooth, and cut gently through the forest and then down along a small river. It was along the river that we ran into a couple of rangers that were clearing up some more fallen trees. We stopped to chat with them and one of their observations really hit home. One said that it “used to be storm season. Now they come all year.” This change in the storm frequency caused a lot of trouble, as now instead of just a couple of clean-ups in a year, they were forced to go out again and again, after each storm blew through.

I think that because we booked our tour fairly late in the season, the preferred accommodations were not always available. Our tour company did the best they could, but I admit that the Tyndrum Lodge was not up to the standards that we enjoyed the night before. And it certainly not up to the standards of the Tyndrum Inn, where we decided to go for dinner that night.

It was while we were sitting with our post-walk beverage that we saw a couple from the hike: Mitch and Marji from the Netherlands. We invited them to sit with us for a drink, which then turned into sitting together for a delicious dinner (fish ‘n chips wins again!). They were very pleasant to talk with and it was nice to get to know them better than “those people on the trail”.

That evening Petra showed us her blisters. How on earth she was able to walk, I have no idea. They were huge and everywhere! She added patches and band-aids and we discussed the pros and cons of popping a blister versus just letting it do its thing. And then Dan found the culprit: the insoles of Petra’s shoes were wet. She hadn’t been taking the insoles out at night to ensure that they were dry by morning. To be honest, neither was I, but I hadn’t suffered the same fate. Dan “tsked” at her as he set her shoes up to dry, and I wondered how well she’d be able to keep up tomorrow. Only time would tell!

Saturday