The West Highland Way - Part 2
The soreness in my feet took a sinister turn –a constant dull ache in the big toe of my right foot (which would take 12 months to heal) placing worry in every other step. Throwing our bags on felt like succumbing to a familiar beating. However, as our bodies wallowed our spirits soared. The dangers of incompletion seemed to be behind us – stubbornness alone would be capable of dragging us to the finish.
The punishing roads through Rannoch Moor did little to calm the increasing hysteria radiating from the nerves in my feet. The edge of reason, the verge of tears, I walked on dreaming of ice-cold rivers and the plunging of my brilliant-white ankles. When this finally happened, I had an interesting memento as the high-water line of my ankle left off where the midge-bite line started. The weather had been kind to us, light drizzle lessening the humid days as we traversed moor and glen. The beauty of the walk salves the spirits when the body is in despair. Impossible blue distances in the sun and the atmospheric closing in of those distances in the rain. Between sweat and drizzle, we were in a near constant state of damp.
An absence of showers meant that every attempt at sleep was disrupted by clogged pores – a phenomenon which I was hitherto unaware of. Baby wipes lessened the suffocating sensation in the skin, but they could only do so much. Limping into Kinlochleven on the penultimate day was a relief. A laundry released my socks from their structural integrity – they had practically been standing to attention. The warm, damp smell of the dry-room flooding my mind with memories of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. Showering lifted the clogged sensation and it alone was worth the cost of the campsite.
The next morning brought forth a business-like attitude as we set out knowing that the end was in reach. The initial climb from the nook of Kinlochleven steadied the pace before we crept into Glen Nevis and the dizzying Vistas offered by the bulk of Ben Nevis itself. By this point we were each nursing our own pains and we fell into the greatest desynchronisation of pace during our time on the way.
The sight of a Golden Eagle buoyed me, and on any normal day I would have rejoiced in watching it for untold hours, but I knew that I had budgeted only so many hours of focus and out with those hours a fatigued hysteria probably awaited. The downhill section was painfully long and extraordinarily taxing. Controlling of one’s mass down such a long descent places tremendous strain on the muscles and, when they are exhausted, the joints. I had lost feeling in the big toe on my right foot by this stage and that provoked anxiety and a desire to get to the base of the hill (where I would change into my flip flops for the last few miles of the way).
The flip-flop slap and drag of my gait over the last few miles might have raised a few eyebrows, but it pulled my experience back into the realms of enjoyment. We solemnly marched through Fort William, past pubs and shops, seemingly ad infinitum, until we reached the sore feet statue. Visibly sagging from our exertions, we had to ask a man posing with the statue, and not keen on moving, to move as we wanted to tick off the last kodak moment of the way. A little bewildered that he might need to move he eventually took his cigarette and sat on a neighbouring bench while we ran through the gamut of poses – delighted to have the bags off our backs.
The physical sensations of the walk were trying, but at no point did I truly begrudge them. Walking on alongside my discomfort was an enlightening experience. The beauty of the way, the stories we heard, the people we met, and the sights we saw more than made the journey worthwhile. An appetite for such journeys has awoken within me. Repeating the Way is certainly going to figure in my future. There are many ways to complete the West Highland Way, or even to complete a few parts of it, but the best method is to be mindful of the experience when you can. Enjoy the changing of the ground, the landscape, the smells of the fauna. Take your time to chat to those you meet and let the accomplishment become a fully rounded experience.
