Cape Wrath Trail: The Halfway Milestone & Beyond! (Day 9 & 10)
good morning campers it is now half six and day number nine on the cape wrath trail we had a nature's alarm call we had the cuckoo and then we also had a snipe and i'll just sort of play what a snipe sounds like if you've never heard one before so i had that at four o'clock in the morning plus the cuckoo so that woke me up anyway the tent has no condensation so that's good right yo it's just gone nine o'clock and we are packed and ready to go as usual leave no trace let's roll that's the clock started on the watch ratio more track bashing for us we are on the way to lock and fader which is meant to be a superbos location so we're looking forward to getting up there i've often seen that that's usually when i've been away for a long weekend all right folks we've been going an hour and forty now just over seven kilometers and we've got our first really good view of the fisherfield monroes so the one in the back here that is a vagin this one here is ben tarson and this one here is malik corey mcferker something like that and just poking up here is sleock so we've got a few more kilometers to go before we reach lochen feder drinking folks this is stunning super boss so we're not looking further at the moment the plan is we're going to ignore the path it goes down and we're going to take a bearing it's a small locker up there and head up that way and then we're going to get our bialik which is fuller up again so i will keep you informed of how we get on with that we're in the middle of a dry spell so the train underfoot should be okay if i put my rucksack on you will sting me hit your left that's it when you go good boy you're good yay monday there you go that's better for you there you go right oh folks we've reached a little walk in here we're a little bit below the standard boot crew which is above us over there but i can see the bialock that we want to take us through to the next section of the hike and the contour lines look alright in the map so we're going to stick to this height work our way around to the belac i'll bring you back there all right folks brought you back early because we have found an absolute cracker of a hidden gem here the bialik is just over my shoulder where we found this amazing water slide it's cascading down the slabs as a natural pool right there lovely so deep just in here i've had a towel with me i'd be in late this is stunning alrighty folks that's us at bialack and necrois and from here it is downhill now now coming across cutting an angle from the standard route wasn't actually that bad at all i wouldn't try and bad weather because that obviously that waterslide would be impossible in spain but in good conditions i would they i would suggest it wasn't too many peat hacks to negotiate but again i can't really compare because i haven't been up the higher upgrade up there so six and a half a dozen maybe right folks usually the route will swing up towards shenandoah buffy um in lockheed which is a popular camping spot we however is where we branch off and do a slightly more bespoke route and we head along to this block of ryan buffy and then from there we're going to decide if we're going to spend the night there or push on to ian's house ian's house forest way bunkhouse is 12 kilometers from the buffet it sounds doable it is doable obviously uh we've done 14 kilometers so far and we've probably got an r4 to the buffet over this rough uh pathless terrain before we pick up the path so it's quite early today it's only about two o'clock or something so the temptation is there to push on and then that would buy us an extra day and the only thing is there's some rain coming in ian wouldn't mind avoiding that but to avoid that would mean two rest nights and i think two rest nights is about ott i think you'd get a bit lazy and it'd be hard to get going again so i'd definitely only want one zero day two would be way too much this here is scurban and the torres monroe known for it's a boulder fields and you'll see here on the left and the right side of it you've got the skewer band slab so just zoom in and you can get some really nice roots up those slabs quite a phenomenal feature that really grippy quartz in the dry alrighty we are on the path happy days so you can see that's a bjark we've come from we picked up a path that comes down here and then a bit of a cross-country section over the heller and bog it wasn't too bad up here to the path so it took us five hours to get here from uh kindle queue and i've got fifteen and a half kilometers on the clock so she don't have about another two and a half kilometers to the buffet oh let's go let's go joe no way that's a buffy that is somebody's house surely not i'll be the buff in the back let's have a look seriously something now i'll show an idiot all right you've had it just let me see oh you didn't have to nice empty not too bad three sleeping platforms here a couple here nice little stove please place it thing up your gear that was my show thinking the white house is all locked up that's for like duke of edinburgh and stuff like that both of us are feeling strong so uh we're going to push on and uh it's a four kilometer walk out to the road and then a six kilometer walk to eons so uh it's only just after three o'clock so this seemed to early packing so we shall continue on yes come on let's do this oh diddy diddy me i don't know if i've made the mistake here we got to the end of the walk which was about throwing a bit kilometers for the buffet and uh ian had found his dad for a lift so i was like no i want to do this and it's full entirety he's like yeah we can go back and do it tomorrow but like well tomorrow's a rest day so i would be faffing about doing this last section so yeah they're away ian's going to do this tomorrow and i've now got a two kilometer road walk to find the track that takes me down to forest forest way oh it was so tempting just seeing the car right i've done two kilometers down the road do apologize for shooting into the sun but ian says i have to walk past the little hydro station there and then before the bridge pick up this hydro track here so i hope this is a one we'll go for it i'll report back in other news i am worked out last night back at uh kimwalk u we have done we had done 112 miles yesterday so at some point today we would have uh smashed the halfway barrier because uh let's think i think the the cable arches between 220 to 250 miles depending on what sort of routes you do because there's so many variations so yeah maybe looking further was the halfway mark i don't know but it's a nice milestone but it's quite daunting as well to think that i've been going nine days and i'm only halfway through so uh the good thing is this strathcarin you then switch over to the harvey's north map of the cape raf trail so that was another significant milestone as well this body track keeps climbing by oh a signpost cool egg path look to the map can't see anywhere called cool egg seems to be roughly going in the direction i want it so let's do it oh i kid you not folks i am glad this path is finally losing height because it was hogging just under the 200 meter contour lines like come on come on men's is going to drop and i'm happily dropping oh dear me that's a just over 31 kilometers on the clock man is that you've done in today minion 24 24 i can't hear all right 20 40 and that's right i i've still got another two three go this way it looks like i've got a nice tarmac farm track to follow across a bridge onto the main road any of the little woodland section at lao forest and that's 15-20 minutes and i'll be there hurrah we're here thank god for that alrighty folks that is us off we're on the go again and uh what we've got is just a little bit of road walking to the the start of the next section and i'll bring you back in the lao where we read phone boxes alrighty so there's a little red telephone box and we are heading up this track here well after a wee rest day it is good to be back on the trail although i must admit this morning i felt about meh at the four of an hour seven eight days ahead but hey i know once we got a few climbers in the legs we'll be fine ian's got us a little shortcut here instead of going that way we're going to take a mountain bike track it takes us this way and it gets us up onto the higher path quicker straight over at the junction oh i may breath well for the first time in 10 days we've got the waterproofs out and typically the rain comes down a bit but just looking ahead to the cloud above we're going to get soaked to some point so we may as well get them on now probably sweat like a sweaty thing alrighty folks we're almost to the top of this track and we've got a couple of options here most of the guidebooks will take you around this big featureless lump here and you'll skirt around that but we're actually going to go up and over the summit because only an extra 50 meters and it kinda means you avoid some of these peat hags and also when you get over the other side of that you can make a more sort of direct line straight down into glen duke so that is a plan it is literally only an extra 50 meters up to the summit and this is also a gram all right folks glass is at the top of the grain now visibility is rubbish so we're going to push off down towards by duke so hopefully you can just make out the lock that we want to be going down we've got glenn dukery here and then the buffet knocking down is just flat along that lock so hopefully the camera's picking that out so we're just going to make a gentle descent you want to cross that river as soon as possible and avoid that gorge and then stick to the right hand side so let's go one stop it's quarter to one and i'm starving but it's some shillings we're just having a wee breather here over there build the wind glenn duggar scott is just over that way not far to go now right so we found a path and you can see why the guidebooks suggest staying on the right side of the river because our gorge is just starting to form just over there but the terrain is getting rougher as well that's pretty cool right we went through the gate and there's a path on the other side of the fence and it seems to tie him with the map so i think this is the right way what do you mean i think what we'll do is right we are back on the other side of the fence that we started on and i can see from here with ian jumping the fences making progress up the hill so uh i'll bring you back if this is the right way i'll bring you back anyway all right folks just a quick report back we're now on the right tracks so you definitely want to stay on this side of the fence don't go through that gate don't be offended to be fair to us on a 150k map that why the land is really tight and it's a little bit hard to read but uh we've got our bearings and we're back on track happy days folks we're now on the land rover track and the cross country bog shotting is finished for today because this track pretty much goes all the way to oiko bridge whoa so the plan is i'm going to continue on this track i'm going to stop in knock down fluffy just for a quick look and a breather and then we're going to head to the school of rock buffy i spy with my little eye something beginning with b you guessed it buffy right here we are we are at the bobby now the footage will probably be a little bit grainy when i get inside just probably being about dark and dingy oh it's got upstairs cool well it's got like uh this is the luxury of here like that's like a couple of here somebody swatch upstairs oh it's the honeymoon suite oh my missus would love this here nicole if you're watching this can be your treat for let me do the cape raft show even better in the roy bridge hotel alrighty lunch stop and we're back on the go all right folks i would quickly bring you back haven't been doing any filming at all because there's not a lot to film at the moment we've been on a track since god knows back when and uh we're just making our way to this schoolhouse buffy now what's that coming over the hill is it a buffy is it a puppy here we are the schoolhouse hi robin i used to the whiteboard sorry mr you
2021-06-13 00:14
