Stratherrick, Fort Augustus and Loch Oich
Our send off from Foyers Bay House was a good breakfast and the most enormous pack lunches. (Looking ahead through my description of food, I find that the word ‘enormous’ occurs repeatedly). Molly was kind enough to allow us a formal portrait before we set out.
We pushed our push bikes up the steep path back onto General Wade’s road knowing that we had a long slow climb ahead of us, and we were firmly resolved to prefer knees over dignity: get off and push before the knees began to scream. The road from Foyers bobbed up and down through forests a bit and then we found ourselves following a peaty, musical stream climbing gently up into Stratherrick. The forest disappeared. We could see our road lolloping up softly through the glen, and around us the clouds and the heather and the sky drew patterns on the hills. We cycled past a Catholic Church in the middle of Stratherrick, and wondered how such a broad and kindly valley had endured the successive scars of the last millennium: the wars of independence, Reformation, the Acts of Union, the uprisings, the suppression so starkly drawn by General Wade’s road on which we rode, the clearances, the wars and plagues of the 20th century… There would once have been forests here, and then there would have been thriving communities. Now there were a few crofts, and unsigned but obviously most of the land belonged to great estates, and there were clusters of tourist chalets. What would independence bring to a place like Stratherrick—would the road be widened and the deadly rhythm of ‘development‘ overwhelm it, or would local control and the breaking-up of the estates make for a sustainable green economy?
At Whitebridge we saw the white stone of General Wade’s bridge gleaming through the moss. Here as elsewhere we found signs and markers for the Great Glen Ways — the Scottish authorities, Sustrans and others have crafted a brilliant tourist path. Although we’re pedalling our way through a week before ‘the season’ starts, we have seen a few other cyclists and walkers. At least 2/3 of the motorists we encounter, the local farmers and taxis and bin lorries, respond with at least a hand-raise, and most with wholehearted waves and smiles. The touring Mercedes and Audis that zoom past would prefer to ignore us.
The hills became more insistent. Eleanor’s bicycle grumpily decided it didn’t want to reach its lowest gear—we will tighten the cable this morning—and we walked up the steepest bits. Ahead of us, across a recently cut and replanted forestry plantation, we can see the highest point on our journey. Push the bikes up the hill and we found ourselves looking back down cross Stratherrick and beyond, a huge Highland view.
The descent that followed was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. My steel bike, not light but solid, really loves the downhills and for the first time ever I understood why some people might like disc brakes. When we finally fell into parkland outside Fort Augustus it was clear that we had been right to cycle the Great Glen Way from Inverness towards Fort William; that hill would have been miserable on loaded touring bicycles for us, who are mere mortals.
Fort Augustus was lunch and a break. We met a gang of kilted hikers, a happy group who had walked the West Highland Way last year in kilts and were tackling the Great Glen this year. They were making for Laggan, as we were. What next after this, I asked. Perhaps the Great Himalayan Trail? The Appalachian Trail, they proposed. We set off down the canal. The hard ascent of the morning had worn Eleanor out, so we trundled along at a modest pace, The trail was excellent, a fine-packed surface, and we slowly picked up speed and spirits as we followed the bends in the river. At one lock we stopped at a bench for an orange. The hills stood high over the canal draped in cloud-shadows and colours. A woodpecker arrived in the old birch over the bench. Whether it was the quality of the wood or the bird itself had a hollow head I do not know, but its tapping was remarkably resonant.
We had to wait at the Loch Oich swing bridge as it was swung open. There were two young brothers crowded onto the prow of the first boat through, and the younger brother gave us a formal salute as their great ship sailed by. The older brother deferred to his younger brother’s right to signal the shore, but suddenly grinned. The path around Loch Oich has a few annoying gates with low thresholds over which bicycles must be hoisted, but is otherwise a delight. It follows the grade of an old branch line through cuts, a small tunnel, along grades and is generally as easy as two tired cyclists could possibly want. The loch itself is narrow and the woods are mossy. We saw Invergarry Castle and a half-sunken boat on the other side. At the end of Loch Oich we crossed the A82 again, pedalled down the now rather narrow path along Laggan Locks, took a short diversion onto the A82 and arrived at Forest Lodge Guest House, our home for the night. Dinner was a thoroughly filling and tasty cottage pie with veg. Our hosts had only opened their B&B this year, having moved up to Laggan from Cromer in Norfolk last year. They were tremendously welcoming!
The only other guest was a teacher from Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Her grandmother had been born in Scotland but had passed twenty years ago; and she herself had been in a terrible accident that had crushed her legs around the same time. She was, she said, lucky to have kept her left leg at all—and after a long process of healing she was walking the Great Glen Way.