Last day in Scotland…

• Posted by: Geo Kearley
• Comments: 2

We’ve been to the Lochaber Highland games, and climbed Ben Nevis – it’s been a great couple of days. We stayed at a fun hostel in Corpach (Smiddy’s Bunkhouse) where we made some new friends and enjoyed a lot of laughs.

The Highland Games were lots of fun to see – strangely enough, the majority of the heavy events (hammer throw, caber toss, stone throw…)were won by a Canadian. It’s a small world. The games are interesting, as they include events that allow spectators to participate – there was an international relay race and an international tug-o-war where you had to assemble 4 and 8 people respectively, from your country to compete against other countries. Unfortunately there were not enough Canadians present to put together either team, but that may have had something to do with the MC stating on the speaker system “…surely there must be some Americans out there… if not there must be a bunch of Canadians who can put together a team to compete… Canadians always come in second to the Americans… that ought to get them out to compete…” I’m not sure if he understood that comments like that about Canadians go over about as well as someone saying ” Scots always come in second to the English.” – It wouldn’t move the Scots to go out and defeat the English so much as it might move them to take out the person who made the comment. Regardless, it was lots of fun to see the Clan battles, the races (a dog joined in the relay race – and won! – it’s owner was in the beer tent…)and the caber toss in particular. We didn’t know until we went to the games that the objective of the toss is to flip the caber so that it lands as close to a 12 o’clock position as possible. The airforce performed a sky dive routine where 5 parachutists landed in the middle of the games – that was very impressive, given it was drizzling out. Other than that, the weather held for the whole day – probably the most amazing thing about the whole day!

We were very fortunate that the weather held the next day as we made our way up Ben Nevis with our friend form the hostel – Alex, Tom, Cindy and Sonder. I know that compared to many of the mountains we climb in Austria, the elevation of Ben Nevis is negligible, but the amount of elevation you gain is still substantial. You start at sea level and go up 1300m. That’s nothing to sneeze at no matter where you’re climbing. It took us approximately 6 hours to go up and down the mountain, and we were treated to some of the most spectacular views of Fort William, Corpach, the sea lochs and the Caledonian Canal system – not to mention Five Finger Gulley on the south side of the mountain, and the impressive North Face of Ben Nevis, lit up by the sun. Did you know that there are the remains of an old inn or dwelling built out of stone right at the summit of Ben Nevis? It was amazing to see these old stone foundations beside the Peace Cairn erected at the end of WWII at the summit.

Now we’re goofing off in Fort William waiting for the train to take us to Glasgow. Tomorrow we fly to Austria, but we have a full day lay-over in London, so we hope to put that time to good use!

Noel & George

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Date posted :	Jul 31, 2006
Last modified :	Dec 30, 2007
Categories :	Scotland, Western Europe
Tags :	Austria, Fort William, Glasgow, London, Scotland