Day 7: Arriving in Glencoe and Ballachulish

This morning we had one last breakfast at The Real Food Café, and then waited for the taxi. Debbie had called them the night before to clarify the instructions: the driver was to take her to the Inveroran Hotel, and then was to take me straight on to the Glencoe Ski Center. The former was covered under our package deal with the travel agency; the latter required me to pay him in cash for the extra miles. But the Glencoe Ski Center was our planned terminus for that day. From there, our itinerary said that another taxi would drive us to the Ballachulish Hotel for the night. Two nights, in fact: when the agency first planned our trip and we asked for something more leisurely, they gave us a rest day in Ballachulish.

So away we went. The road to the Inveroran Hotel was "fun" [I use that word instead of many others that come to mind], because it was (at the widest) a one-lane road that accepted traffic in both directions. And yes, we encountered cars coming the other way in the process of getting Debbie to her spot on the Way; then I encountered more traffic coming the other way as the driver took me back along that road until we could reach the main highway. But of course the driver understood all this and was able to deal with it. I'm just grateful that the drivers coming the other direction were equally accommodating.

When I got to the Glencoe Ski Center, it was still morning. So I found the signs to the West Highland Way, and started tracing it backwards. I took a leisurely pace, and in the end I covered about three miles of trail (parts of it more than once) before I met up with Debbie at the Ba Cottage.

By this time I was clearly doing a lot less hiking than Debbie. But the scenery was truly sublime—majestic on a scale that dwarfed any human pretensions. I wish I had been strong enough to hike the whole way … and that my phone had been working, so that I could have taken picture. I think Debbie took some.

Once we met up, Debbie and I got some refreshment at the Glencoe Ski Center (coffee, tea, cookies) and then met our taxi to reach the Ballachulish Hotel. We checked in, and then got dinner and bed.