Back home!

We arrived in Salt Lake City at about 6:30 PM last night. The two flights were good. Our one checked bag arrived in Salt Lake OK, with no delays, which was very nice. Dez and the kids picked us up at the airport (Mark had another commitment). It was very good to see them, and we're all planning to get together later today.

It was quite a long day, with the extra 7 hours added on. After getting home we arranged a few things and made a couple of phone calls, and by about 9:30 PM we were both ready for bed. I slept well, but woke up pretty early this morning, and I feel good. Not sure about Lisa yet, as she's still in bed.

Somehow in our planning I had forgotten that today was a holiday (for some reason I was thinking that Memorial Day weekend would be next weekend), so it was actually rather nice to discover that instead of heading into work in an hour or so I can relax a bit, take care of things around here, and enjoy a little more time with Mark, Dez and the kids later. I hope everyone enjoys the holiday!

We're in - Cincinnati?!

It's definitely not quite the same as London, where we were this morning, but that's where we are now. We'll be boarding our flight for Salt Lake City shortly, so we really will be home soon. We're not quite sure how we feel about that, but it certainly will be good to see everyone, and we do have a few photos and stories to share. See you soon!

Almost the end of our journey now - we're in England!

We had the TGO Challenge dinner on Thursday night and then celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary yesterday (our celebration was rather low key, but still nice - our last full day in Scotland!). We left Montrose this morning on the train to Edinburgh. We made a brief connection and changed trains in Edinburgh, and right now we are on the train heading to London King's Cross station. It's a nice, comfortable, and rather scenic ride. We are seeing (fleetingly) more of the Scottish and now the English countryside, which is good. The route mostly follows the east coast from Edinburgh to Newcastle, which we will be approaching soon. From Newcastle the route heads more inland on the way to London.

We'll spend the afternoon and this evening in London, and will fly out of London Gatwick airport tomorrow morning and then arrive back in Salt Lake City tomorrow afternoon. Then it's back to work on Monday morning - that's going to be a shock, but hopefully it will be OK! We'll be seeing and talking to all of you soon!

The end of our "official" walk, but not the end of our journey

I apologize to everyone who is wondering exactly where we are and what is going on with us, for waiting three days to let you know that we had actually left the TGO Challenge walk officially. Right now we are camped in Braemar. Tuesday we took a bus and then train from Fort Augustus to Montrose, where we retrieved some of our belongings that we had sent on ahead. Yesterday we were able to get the parcel that contained this laptop computer, so that's at least partly why it's taken a while to get everyone updated.

We do have cell phone access at this point, with UK numbers. Currently we are on the Vodafone network with the number +447766600112 (if you are not familiar with it, the "+" stands for the international dialing prefix, which in the US is 011 - most cell phones should be able to accept the "+" itself directly as part of the number). We do have a T-Mobile number, as well, which is +447940164915. We might switch to that at some point if the Vodafone network is not available, but for now the Vodafone number is the one that should reach us.

We're not quite sure of all of our further plans at this point, but we'll let everyone know and will be making some phone calls ourselves (finally!).

Day 4 - Monday 11 May

Because of the sloping tent, Lisa and I both had trouble getting a really good sleep Sunday night, even though the weather held out and was great, and otherwise the camp site was good. The first thing we had to do was continue slogging through the boggy path, now moving away from the allt, until we had climbed to reach the road to Cougie. This was still really pretty hard going, and was compounded or at least certainly not helped by the relatively poor sleep the night before. We did make it to the main track to Cougie (about 0.3 of a mile further) in reasonable time, but it wasn't a great way to get started for the day. Lisa, especially, was already pretty well worn out. The main track was quite a lot better, although there were some frequent wet spots that needed to be avoided, but it seemed to keep going on and on. We reached the lochan (small lake) where we had originally planned to camp on the second night, and it was quite beautiful and we spotted at least one good campsite there, but we still weren't quite to Cougie yet.

Pretty soon we saw a sign put out for the TGO Challengers stating "Cougie Lodge 2 miles", with the promise of food and refreshments available on arrival, so this was hopeful, but still the walking seemed to take a long time. Lisa began having more and more trouble with the back and leg pain, and also started becoming nauseous (didn't actually vomit, but it seemed like she might). She was clearly quite exhausted, and at around that point she decided that she was not going to walk any farther than Cougie (and she was hoping that she would actually get there!).

We did make it to Cougie by mid afternoon, around 1400 (I think), and it was a very welcome sight. The owner, Val, and her daughter, Tina, and daughter-in-law, Sasha, who were there to help Val handle the influx of Challengers, were extremely hospitable and made us feel very welcome. A cup of tea and some scones didn't hurt, either. Lisa perked up pretty quickly and started to feel quite a bit better, but she still knew that she was done with the walking for now. Since we are from Utah, Val told us the details of her "dream trip" to the Southwestern US that she and Tina took in 1998 (or 99). They went through 4 or 5 states, getting as far into Utah as Green River, and had a wonderful time.

Eventually, the food, drink and stories were done, and it was time for us to get on with our new plans. We were scheduled and had a reservation to spend the night at The Caledonian Hotel in Fort Augustus, where I had also stayed in 2007. Tina graciously offered to give us a ride there, which we accepted. That evening we had a wonderful multiple course meal (which I had fully expected, given my previous experience there) and then had the luxury of a wonderful room and bed. Further planning would wait until the next morning.

Our total distance traveled from Shiel Bridge to Cougie was 23.1 miles.

Day 3 - Sunday 10 May

Both of us ended up sleeping fairly well Saturday night, and Sunday morning we were packed up and ready to go fairly early. Eddie left the bothy a little later that us, but caught up to us a little way down the trail. We all ended up at the Alltbeithe Youth Hostel at nearly the same time, and also ran into some additional Challengers there, including Gordon Greene, who we had ridden on the train with, and Des Horan. The hostel is a fairly nice place, which is off of any regular roads, at just about the head of Glen Affric. From there we continued down the track alongside the River Affric, into the glen. The going was much less steep than the day before, but there were still some ups and downs as the track avoided certain natural obstacles as it generally followed along the river. Lisa seemed to do fairly well with this walking, but still had to stop fairly frequently to "open up" her back by bending forward, as she was continuing to have some leg pains.

By now the weather had turned really quite nice, with no more rain and quite a lot of sunshine. Lisa actually ended up getting just a little sunburned (not bad), even though both of us wore our wide-brimmed sun hats nearly the entire day. We were heading toward Cougie, still just about a day behind our planned route. We began to see the forested areas of Glen Affric, which were quite nice, as we had been told they would be. The track on the south side of the loch was very good, and as we got nearer to the car park at the east end of Loch Affric, it became fairly heavily used by other day walkers and some cyclists. We saw Eddie, Gordon and Des a few more times during the day, but eventually they went on a little ahead.

At one point someone spotted a stag deer up on nearby ridge, looking down on us, and we also saw the doe (I'll post some photos later). Somewhere along the way we also heard the call of a cuckoo bird for the first time - it sounds pretty cool - pretty much just like the clock!

As we were beginning to near the end of the day we arrived at the public footpath to Cougie. This was definitely progress, but, unfortunately, it was also the beginning of some very difficult walking. The footpath began climbing fairly steeply alongside the Allt Garbh (an allt is a small river or creek) , and it was incredibly boggy! With every step water and/or mud oozed out under our shoes, and it was difficult to know where to place the next step. The going was quite slow. Lisa was getting extremely worn out by this.

Eventually, before it got too late, we got to the top of the rise along the allt, where the path began to turn, and were able to find a more or less suitable campsite. I say "more or less" suitable, because although it was actually a generally dry area beneath a nice large pine tree, there just wasn't any really level ground, and certainly none the size of our tent floor. So, we had to pitch the tent with a certain amount of sloping of the floor. Normally that amount of slope probably wouldn't be a really big deal, but, our tent has a silnylon (siliconized nylon) floor, which is very slick, and Lisa's new Thermarest sleeping pad also has a very slick surface, so anyone on that pad almost automatically will end up sliding down into the tent wall. We anchored our extra trekking poles to serve as something of a barrier to that, but it was still a problem. Lisa and I switched sleeping pads, as mine is not nearly as slick on the tent floor, but mine is also a great deal shorter, and still does tend to slide some. So, we went to bed and hoped for the best! At least the weather was still good. Our total distance traveled at that point was 19.3 miles.

Day 2 - Saturday 9 May

We ended up sleeeping fairly well in our "cozy" shelter - in fact, we slept fairly late, and didn't end up getting an especially early start. Once we were going, we did have a fairly steep and rocky trail for most of the way, and did a fair bit of climbing. This was actually probably the hardest day of climbing and rough, rocky trail that we had planned for the entire walk. Even so, I thought it went pretty well, overall. Lisa did struggle with some of it, though, and definitely had some pain in her back and legs, but I thought that she really did very well with it and that maybe she was starting to get a little stronger already. By the time the day was ending, though, she was really tired out and was hurting quite a bit. With both of these first two days being somewhat short, and our pace not especially fast, we were still trying to reach our first day's original goal when it was time to stop. We had been expecting to see the Camban bothy for a while, and finally it did appear, although I don't think Lisa really believed it at first :-). Our total distance traveled at that point was 9.4 miles.

Once inside the bothy, Lisa realized that she was feeling rather chilled and shaky, and decided to stretch out on the sleeping platform inside her sleeping quilt and try to get warm. That took a while, but eventually she did feel better, especially after a hot meal. In the meantime, we were joined at the bothy by a fellow Challenger, Eddie Fowler, from Falkirk, Scotland. This was Eddie's first TGO Challenge. It was good to have Eddie's company, and he and I were able to chat about a number of things, including ultralight backpacking gear and techniques. Eddie also got a fire going in the bothy, from some wood that had already been left there, which made it a little warmer and friendlier. By the time the light faded out (at around 2200), we were ready for some sleep in preparation for another day.

Day 1 - Friday 8 May

I did end up getting a little sleep, and then when we were up we first had a great breakfast and some further conversation with Mike, and we packed up and got ready to leave. We said goodbye to Mike and Sally, but we still had some business that we ended up not being able to get done in Edinburgh and needed to take care of in Kyle before we could leave for Shiel Bridge, so we had to miss our scheduled bus at 0910 (or 9:10 AM, if that helps). We had to send a couple of parcels at the Post Office, get our digital maps printed, buy some additional food and matches, and get some methylated spirits (denatured alcohol) for stove fuel. All of that took until nearly 1200, and then we had to figure out how to get to Shiel Bridge, since there were no more regular buses available for a few hours.

Fortunately, we were able to find a local transportation company that would give us a "taxi" ride for a reasonable rate, and we made it to the Kintail Lodge Hotel by 1330 (1:30 PM).

We signed out on the TGO Challenge roster at the hotel and then started walking! We made pretty good progress on the trail, and in the first few hours out had some interesting weather - sunshine, light rain, heavy rain, and hail - and each one multiple times!

With the shorter than planned day, we made it to the head of Glen Lichd (5.8 miles) and felt that it was time to stop for the day, as the weather wasn't too great and the trail began a significant climb at that point. There was a mountain cabin there (the Haddon-Woodburn Memorial Hut), which was locked, but it had a small accessible area available for anyone to use as a shelter, and we decided to take advantage that rather than trying to set up the tent. It was a little "cozy", but actually not too bad.

Time for an update!

No, we haven't forgotten about this blog! Since Friday afternoon we've been out of phone and internet range pretty much all of the time, including each night, until last night, and then I was too tired to get anything written. I will write some short posts for each day and catch everyone up.

Edinburgh to Kyle of Lochalsh

We've had a very long couple of days of travel since we left Salt Lake Wednesday morning. We got to Edinburgh this morning. The flights were turbulent at times (mainly from Houston to Newark) and our one checked bag arrived in Edinburgh with us, which was good! We had a few hours (but not nearly enough) there, took care of a food package pickup at the Post Office and some other business, and then got on the train for Kyle. The train ride was nice, especially from Inverness to Kyle - very beautiful. We were with some other Challengers on both legs, until they disembarked at either Strathcarron or Plockton and left us to go on to Kyle. It was raining when we got here (of course!), but we are at a very nice B&B, The Old Bank House, and Mike and Sally are very hospitable. Unfortunately, I'm not enjoying their bed much so far, but I will in a few minutes. We are then on to Shiel Bridge later this morning to begin our walk! Lots more to come!

Rob

No sandals this time!

The title for our new blog for this year's TGO Challenge walk reflects the fact that I will not be wearing sandals this time. Rather, both of us will be wearing shoes (how boring!). In fact, both of us have (finally) chosen Montrail Hardrock shoes - mine are 2008 Hardrock Wide, and Lisa's are 2009 Hardrock Women's. We'll let you know how that goes - among a lot of other things!

Rob