John o'Groats to Land's End 2013: Day 11 – Tyndrum to Inversnaid

Having read a few accounts of the route today that rated it as being pretty tough, we decided to make an early start, so were back onto the West Highland Way by 7am. The start led through some very steep wooded sections, but then levelled off and we had made good progress when we reached Inverarnan. It had been raining all morning, so we stopped for lunch at the Inverarnan Hotel, hoping that it would stop by the time we had finished. During our break I had a good look at the map as I also knew that this part of the Way can be badly marked and is more difficult to navigate coming from the North as just about everyone else does it in the other direction and the signs are placed better for them.

With no break in the weather in sight, we headed off from the hotel up a very steep dangerous climb leading to an impassable waterfall. So much for making sure we were going the right way. Heading back down was even more tricky, but when we got to the bottom we spotted the way marker obscured in the undergrowth and picked up the trail again.

Reaching the Western shores of Loch Lomond, the Wet Highland Way becomes a real scramble which is fun at first, but makes the final 10km to Inversnaid seem to take forever and was hard work. There was no time for resting either as we were completely soaked and needed to keep moving to generate some warmth. Eventually we made it to Inversnaid which consists of a large hotel, a bunkhouse a few private houses and not a lot else. The hotel was full so we headed off to the bunkhouse which was also full, but they let us camp in the bunkhouse grounds. The Inversnaid bunkhouse turned out to be a little gem that has pretty much everything we could need, a drying room, showers, Bistro, bar, laundry service and really friendly staff who, in Barnardos tradition, made sure that nobody gets turned away. It was a bit grim heading back to damp tent at the end of the night, but at least we were clean and well fed.

Apparently the stretch that we had just covered was by far the hardest part of the entire 95 Miles of the West Highland Way, so it was a relief to know that tomorrow would be easier.