Well, my notes from the last day of the walk are pretty damned scanty. Suffice it to say we got up at a leisurely hour, showered – at the beginning of the day! – packed our bags one final time, and moseyed on down that last stretch of road.
It was a pretty enough stretch, those concluding 2.5 miles of West Highland Way, from Glen Nevis into Fort William. Of course, we had to do it to say we'd walked the entire WHW. (Also of course, Tim had done it in advance, two days before.) But we'd always thought of Glen Nevis, and the concluding mountain climb, as the spiritual conclusion of the walk. And but then again, we did have to get to our trains – all 10.5 hours of them, to get back home!
As maladroitly foreshadowed yesterday, my shin splint(s? – only the one shin) came back, somewhat roaringly. I was baffled and grateful that it had gone away for one day only – our Ben Nevis ascent day. Now, I supposed, it could pretty much do its worst. To borrow a line from Eric L. Haney, I could do 2.5 miles upside down with my head in a bucket of shit. There'd be oceans of time to rest and recover afterward.
Rather deeply weirdly, we spotted this on the side of the path on the way out of Dodge – it was my shopping list for Tim from two days earlier! We could only imagine that 1) he'd dropped it; 2) some kind country soul had found it and put it up where the owner might find it; and 3) it got rained on.
We ran into a gentleman on the road who guessed we were on "that walk" due to the size of our bags. I pointed out that our bags were smaller than they'd ever been. "We don't smell so good, but we have a light step!"
Here' the official end of walk photo; an A&E ward that was either just that bit too far along, or perhaps in exactly the right place (we weren't sure); and what my boots looked like, in a train carriage I think, after 100 miles of Highlands and two mountains.
Thanks a whole awful very much lot to you for reading along for the ride. (It kind of makes it for me.) Thanks to Tim, as ever, for being the total world-class champion walking companion (and friend) that he is. Until next time, mate! (Which, if you're asking him, isn't going to be very long at all.)
And as a final parting gift, and because I can, here's a larger, higher-resolution (I didn't want to say "higher-quality") version of my debut long-distance walking dispatch music video: "Ben Lomond - 974 Metres of Mean". Bon Earpetit.
Oh, and if you're jonesing for some more cool outdoor adventures (online), check out Tim's various exploits on timcorrigan.com.
