We lulled ourselves into a false sense of security today by believing that a half marathon would be “a walk in the (National) park” and so we didn’t leave Bridge of Orchy until nearly 10am and then made the first proper wrong turn of the trip.

Bridge of Orchy only has 152 residents so dinner and breakfast were both in the one and only hotel. Once again, close on £150 for a two course dinner with wine and breakfast the following morning, feels like a tourist trap, but if we were caught by the locals, we’d rather be trapped in Bridge of Orchy than Ballachulish, on balance, as they do at least provide breakfast here.

To note – we are now two weeks into the trip and a quarter of the way through the distance. So the stats on the last 14 nights stays has been an average accomodation cost of £144.74 per night and 10/14 places have provided breakfast. So fundamentally, walking through any of Scotland in the summer puts you in a tourist trap.

Even though the waiter at the Bridge of Orchy hotel insisted we sit in the naughty corner away from the residents, who were surrounded by approximately eleventy billion empty tables, we did have a very good and  filling breakfast of porridge followed by a lovely eggs benedict.

So we bounced confidently along the West Highland Way for a full 4.9km before we hit the boggy bits again.

Now, a bit of backtrack is necessary here….. Mark subscribes to the premium version of Strava so that he can map our routes effectively. Google maps just sends you down the main A roads to dodge juggernauts and has no care for your life. Strava defaults to following heatmaps of previous people who have covered the same ground before you. So, as the cliche goes “how do you know someone’s a runner? They’ll tell you”. They also post on Strava and so, like history itself, Strava tells the story of the survivors. This is great, Scotland is trying hard enough to kill us already (more of that later) so we’re glad Mark has Strava premium. This also includes a really handy feature of buzzing Mark as soon as we go off piste with an alert that says we are “off route”. This has happened numerous times when we’ve nipped into a local shop; decided to take a parallel path or even just stepped off the route to take a photo. Like a Pavlov’s dog, Scotland has trained Mark that the “off route” alert can be ignored. And so it was that at 4.9km we continued walking in a straight line along this, to swear at the boggy bits again.

Swearing at the boggy bits is standard, as is discussing our future travel plans. So Mark had googled the length of Italy, Japan, Spain, New Zealand, Germany and France to see which one we’d like to walk from North to South, sometime in the future, before we realised how far off the current trajectory we were. The answer is of course, hands down, Japan because a) it’s Japan, which is an incredible country and b) they have a national network of nature based walkways, all brilliantly signposted and on roads that avoid juggernaut dodging. Of course they do, because – see point a).

So, 4.9km turned into 7.1km before we rejoined our route. You’d have thought this sign might have given it away:

Signage for the West Highland Way has not been exactly brilliant for much of today. At one T junction, notable for the three directions you can travel in, this was not helpful.

Signage for paths is not the only confusing element either. This has been the best example of at least three gates we have seen like this, because this at least has a sign on it as well.

Anyway, finally back on the correct path, we spent a lot of time going up, down and through various obstacles like some weird version of The Adventure Game (would love to know how many people reading this have any clue what I’m talking about now).

The sun was shining and it was pretty beautiful, even though this was the longest half we’ve ever walked. 24.62km after we started, we finally reached Crianlarich, population 185 people, and therefore deserving of a Londis supermarket in the same building as the post office. Who’d have thought you could get Worcester Sauce flavour crisps (grab bags no less) in a place that can’t put reliable signposts on a national highway described as one of the best 10 walks in the world? Maybe, this is actually how they are still available in the local Londis, no one else has managed to find them…..

Before collapsing exhausted into bed tonight, just two more things:

1. It turns out that you can add not just haggis, but also black pudding, cheddar cheese and bacon on to the same (coronary infarction inducing) pizza. There is nothing not to love about this combination so I’ve photographed it almost out of sight behind the goats cheese and greenery one we had to pretend to have a balanced diet.

2. I did say I’d revisit the topic of Scotland trying to kill us. Well, it’s now been a week since we discovered the joy that is Scotland’s tick population, so are 99% sure we are not going to die of Lyme disease. Since the main, early symptoms are fatigue and muscle aches, that’s where the 1% of doubt would sit, uncomfortably on gluts that have seen too many hills, but we have no dodgy rashes. So the current tick score is Mark – 3, Janet – 1, Lyme’s Disease – 0.

Distance – 24.6km, should have been 21km