Day two of the Great Glen Way

When I booked my hostels for the Great Glen Way, I realized that I had done this a bit late. I would learn from others that there is an increased number of people walking the Great Glen Way in September as the families that had booked holidays over the summer months were pulled back to school and work. This meant that I ended up finding a hotel that was “in the Fort William Area” but was actually almost 30 kilometres away just outside of Roybridge.

For my second day on the Great Glen Way I had the double whammy of also not considering that I was heading back on a Sunday when local buses were not running to Roybridge and the train was delayed until the afternoon. This resulted in my choosing to walk the entire way back to Gairlochy in order to get back on the trail. Based on Google Maps it looked like, by following the road, you could get there in around 13 kilometres, then I would have around 19 kilometres up the west side of Loch Lochy to my destination of South Laggan. During the extra day I had in Roybridge, I had seen there was a back route across grazing fields from my hostel that crossed the Spean River at Spean Bridge. I didn’t fully realize that this would add an extra three to four kilometres to my route until I got to Spean Bridge. However, I still feel it was a good choice to avoid having to walk on the side of a moderately busy road.

At Spean Bridge I stopped for a break with a coffee and a pastry. Then I continued on, now following the road. People had noted the Commandoes Memorial at Spean Bridge. Originally I thought it was signed I had seen in the town itself, but as I climbed out of Spean Bridge, I came across a memorial at the top of the rise that looked out over the Spean River valley. The memorial was there to partly recognize the role that the area had played to training commandoes in World War Two. This had been a base of training. Throughout the day I would pass plaques next to Loch Lochy where additional information on the training for water to land assaults had occurred or further training had been delivered. It added to the experience of seeing the memorial. Behind the statue was a small garden that had a number of plaques recognizing groups or individual commandoes.

A couple kilometres beyond the memorial was the swinging bridge at Gairlochy. On arrival it was open to allow a boat to pass through the canal. It gave me a chance for a short break and to see how the swinging bridges worked. Then it was back on the Great Glen Way.

The path took me in and out of small villages—mostly just clusters of houses rather than anything formally organized—and cut from next to the Loch to further inland. Sometimes on roads but mostly on paths near the road. The highlight was walking through the Clunes National Forest, a beautiful older growth area that included some managed forests. Although relatively flat there was a some hilly areas and some views across Loch Lochy that were nice to see.

By the time I got to the end of the day, I was glad to get to Laggan. I missed that the village—or collection of houses that makes up South Laggan—was on the road but not on the Great Glen Way path that cut to the east side of the Caledonian Canal as you got to the north end of Loch Lochy. This meant that I had an extra 500 metres to walk as I had to backtrack on the road to the delightful Great Glen hostel. The hostel/hotel had a nice restaurant and was in an old farmhouse that had been remodelled as a hostel it was today.