6.23.2008

ben nevis

last tuesday, davoud, val, paul and i headed for the lake district for a night of camping in pooley bridge (and a couple of pints at the pub) before heading north to scotland. our first stop was the town of oban on the west coast of scotland known as the gateway to the islands. it was a lovely little place and also home to a distillery, so we made sure to go on a wee tour before we left town.

our days of camping in the highlands were constantly plagued by two things: irregular weather and midges. midges are these little bugs that swarm, bite, get everywhere, but in my mind aren't nearly as bad as black flies. i somehow escaped without any bites!

our site in oban was very picturesque and overlooked the sea and isle of mull. we went for a walk down a dead end road from the campsite towards gallanach and discovered this weird building that was built sometime in 1955. from what i have discovered on wikipedia it was home to the first transatlantic telephone cable that was laid between oban and newfoundland between 1955 and 1956. apparently it was important during the cold war providing a hot line between us and ussr presidents. you can read more about it here.

we packed up camp the next morning and made our way to fort william - via the oban distillery - to set up camp before our hike up ben nevis. weather was incredibly changeable whilst we were here because weather from the atlantic ocean gets dumped on the valley, glen nevis, in between the mountains. we did, however, luck out with the weather for our hike up the mountain, which was quite sunny to start out with, snowy at the top and then rainy on the way down. i seem to be able to hike up forever, but i absolutely hate coming down the mountain. it's too hard on ankles, knees and feet.

since weather wasn't on our side indefinitely, despite the sun the morning after our hike, we drove down to camp on the shores of loch lomond. i love loch lomond, probably because it's the closest to feeling like being in northern ontario i've been since moving to the uk. all looked to being going well so we decided to bbq. as soon as we got back to the sit it started to rain, but then let up a bit so we started up the grill. rain, rain and more rain fell from the sky but in true british fashion we sat there in our coats eating our heavily chargrilled burgers because no one believes in propane ;)

eventually we gave up and headed indoors to drink some wine, have our salad course and play euchre- that is after val and i remembered the rules.

the weather did not improve so we came home a day early amongst really heavy rain and gales across the lake district. everything is still drying and airing out, but life should be back to normal soon. still a really great trip despite all of the rain.

oh, and i should probably say that i had to pee halfway down the mountain. now i'm not afraid to squat, but it is a very exposed mountain so i had to squat behind this little wall. a couple of people walked past, but not in the direction we were expecting them too! so there may have been a little show for them. wooops. val took a picture which i'm sure she'll post on her blog and i've now been christened 'wild pee lauren.'

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