Ireland/UK Day 12

July 2, 2023

15.4 miles hiked

Despite feeling like absolute death last night, I feel pretty good this morning—after stretching anyway. I guess this achilles thing is just going to be for life. I need to make sure I do better with doing all of my stretches every single day, before and after hiking.

It’s weird getting back into the hiking rhythm. I pack up, then realize I forgot to put something in, and have to repack it. This part of me is so easy and instinctual, yet I forget the little rhythms so easily.

Once we’re all packed, we leave the hotel room behind and head towards the hotel for breakfast. On the way, I look in the coffee shop window and see a bright yellow shirt under a bearded face: a PCT hiker look if I’ve ever seen one. It’s Mash! His group, which we originally called our Stepfamily in the desert but which I have since learned called themselves Elmer, hiked around us for most of the PCT. He’s from Bedford in England and we’d been talking on Instagram prior to this trip about how we were both going to be on the West Highland Way at the same time. We both started yesterday, but at different times, so we knew we’d probably run into each other today.

I basically sprint into the shop and give him a hug. I didn’t really talk to him that much on the PCT, and definitely not one-on-one, but that doesn’t matter because we both hiked that trail, and that makes us basically family. He’s hiking with his cousin, Will. It’s Will’s first long-distance hike. After the WHW, Mash is continuing north with a couple of other friends (including Snake Charmer from the PCT) onto the Hebridean Way.

I stand there and chat with them for a bit, then say I’ll see them out on the trail and go meet my mom at the hotel for breakfast. But first, we need to ask the hotel staff how she can get to Inversnaid tonight. It’s on the east side of Loch Lomond, but the major road and therefore all the public transit is on the west side. With the help of two people at the front desk, we check that there are water buses running across the loch today, one to Luss and the other from Tarbet to Inversnaid, and she can take a bus in between. Over breakfast (which is delicious, an extensive spread consisting of all the ingredients of a traditional Scottish breakfast like eggs, beans, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, and what I think might be haggis), we work out the route, and afterwards, we both head out walking down the road, first stopping at the iconic Tom Weir statue. (What I glean from the plaque is that he was a prominent Scottish outdoorist and they’re big fans around here.)

There’s a split where the WHW goes up a hill and the road to the ferry keeps going straight, so I hug Mom continue upwards on my own.

It’s a completely pointless hill, a PUD, and it goes right back down to the beach, but at least it was a good warmup. For the rest of the day, the trail is basically right along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond, in the forest. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of the northern AT, where the trail right alongside a lake or pond was rocky and rooty but you weren’t too mad about it because the view across the water was sublime. The weather today doesn’t seem quite as erratic. It switches between rain and sun, of course, but the periods of sun (or at least dry) feel longer. Maybe it’s because of the tree cover.

At one point, I check my phone and see a text from Mom with a photo of a notice at the ferry dock that said the Sweeney’s water bus to Luss was no longer running. I know there’s another company, Cruise Loch Lomond, that operates in the area, and I check their website and confirm that they also have a water bus to Luss. She books it, and all seems well. She sends me a photo from the water bus later. It’s an amazing view! I think she gets a way better view of the loch than I do at any point today.

At a road crossing, I pass by the same Scottish couple as yesterday: the guy with the kilt, long socks, and cap with pheasant feathers. In that same characteristic style, he rattles off a stream of advice about which route to take and how to get to the Inversnaid bunkhouse where we’re staying and how I’ll enjoy this route because there are no “monkeys” here. Cars whoosh by every few seconds, yet he does not change his volume or wait for them to pass, so I get snippets of heavily accented Scots English that I find myself just smiling and nodding to. I say thanks and continue on, and they continue sitting there, smoking away, waiting for their next hiker to pass by.

I’m truly alone for a while after that. I expected a little more traffic on this trail, honestly, but I don’t mind. A few people pass me, I pass a few people, but for the most part, it’s quiet. It’s extremely green around me, between the ferns and the pines, and I still have those gorgeous views of the loch every so often. I find my mind wandering placidly, setting into its natural state.

I’m thinking of Scottish town names, and how sometimes they’re not pronounced anything like how you would assume they’d be based on the spelling, and then I’m trying to think of how to explain the pronunciation of Balmaha. I’d say it’s pronounced like “Omaha,” but the first syllable “bal” has an “a” sound sort of like the one in “quack.” But then I think maybe it could be “crack.” Then I quack myself up with this joke that pops into my head: What do you call a duck with a drug problem? A quack addict.

Once the hilarity has subsided, I continue on my merry way, encountering a rather steep but pretty short uphill. I attack it with my 100-step strategy: hike 100 steps steadily, then you can have a break. Rinse and repeat. It carries me up pretty quickly, and passing people makes me feel way faster than I am.

Soon, I arrive at Rowardennan, which is not pronounced like you think, and which has a visitor center with a water tap and a bathroom. I use both, then I spot Mash and Will sitting at a picnic table having lunch. I join them and set about eating my very hikertrash meal, the same one as yesterday: a flatbread from Tesco, cream cheese that hasn’t been in a refrigerator for two days, and crushed-up chips (sorry, crisps) from a ziploc bag. I pair this with some sugar snap peas, which taste absolutely divine.

Mash and I quickly fall into a rhythm of talking about the PCT, life since the trail, and other hiking-related topics. I realize that I don’t know Mash’s real name, and I ask for it. He laughs, and then to Will, says, “See? I was telling you that hikers were like this.” Then, to me, he says, “It’s Ben.”

“No, that’s weird. I don’t like that. You’re Mash.” I shake my head and make a face as though I’ve just tasted something sour.

He laughs again. “See, that’s why when you introduced yourself as ‘Sarahmarie’ earlier to Will, I was like, no. You’re Passport.”

We finish up our lunch and then carry on down the trail. I hike with them for the rest of the day. I sort of hijack Mash from Will, actually, which I apologize for later, but Mash had explained to him that they were going to run into me and, given how hikers are, it was likely that we’d be hiking and talking about the trail for the rest of the day.

It is miraculous to be with another trail person. It feels like shedding the pretenses and tensions of post-trail, non-trail life and getting back to the core of yourself. With another hiker, you don’t have to explain yourself or communicate what it was like to live outside for five months and how it feels to miss that self desperately, no matter how well you’ve settled into “normal.” Like I said, I never talked with Mash one-on-one on the PCT, but there is no adjustment period to this conversation today, and I feel comfortable with him immediately. We talk of our tramilies and the degree to which we are still in touch—his is still very close and have an active group chat, and they talk individually often, while mine, unfortunately, has largely fallen apart. We talk about pain and adjustment and that feeling of being in the wrong place, even if it’s not the wrong place. And we reminisce on the trail, shared memories, the afterimage of stars.

I’m tearing up as I’m writing this.

I’m not sure I realized how much I needed this. True, I met Machine, who’s now my boyfriend, on the PCT—so I have that constant piece of the trail with me. But I always forget that that’s how we met because now he just seems like such a key part of the fabric of normal life. To be with someone that I have literally not seen since being on the PCT—and hiking with him on a long-distance trail in another country—is magic or medicine I didn’t know I needed. It transports me right back and shows me that those miles live on.

Mash gets this feeling, this need to be reminded that trail people are still out there and that the trail really happened. Recently, he got a tattoo on his wrist of a line from Carrot Quinn’s blog and the end of her book Thru Hiking Will Break Your Heart. It reads “More real than anything.” The idea is that no matter how much time passes and how much it all feels like a dream, it did happen. It was real: “more real than anything.” (He also got a tattoo across his fingers with the mileage of the PCT last year: 2653. Carrot has a similar one, from the mileage of the trail the year they hiked.)

We take the low route right next to the loch as opposed to the easier high route, which means that there are lots of slippy rocks and PUDs, but also very beautiful views of the loch. It starts chucking rain and we dip into the Rowchoish Bothy. A bothy is a kind of primitive shelter, sort of like shelters or lean-tos on the Appalachian Trail. Like AT shelters, they vary in size and intricacy. This one is pretty big and well-equipped with a table, counters for cooking, a fireplace, and a sleeping area. Unlike the AT, many of these have been here for a very, very long time, and are often old barns or built on the site of centuries-old farms. There’s a logbook, in which I write an entry that I sign with my trail name. It feels good.

We have a short walk to Inversnaid after that, more slippy rocks and little hills and conversation, and then there is a waterfall and a bridge and I see the white building that is the Inversnaid Hotel. Mash and Will are continuing, but we have basically the same schedule for the trail so I’ll probably see them again.

I can’t get through to my mom, so I go into the very posh hotel (I have to take my hiking shoes off and put my pack into a foul-smelling storage room), use the bathroom, and, when I don’t see her anywhere and figure that they are probably not very friendly to hikers, continue up the road to the Inversnaid Bunkhouse, where we have a reservation. It’s a really cool place, and I’m instantly glad we were able to get a room here. It used to be a church, and they preserved the original structure and stained glass, but added a level so that the top floor is a cozy bistro. The guy tells me that yes, my mom is here, and he shows me to the room. Reunited! We compare our days, and she tells me about how they were not super friendly to her in the hotel so she walked up here.

“You walked? That was a crazy hill!”

She just smiles. “It was a nice walk!” I think she’ll become a backpacker yet.

We have a delicious dinner in the bistro; I order venison stew and mom gets a curry. Both are good, but the curry is particularly excellent. I also have an alcoholic ginger beer that is very refreshing after a long day of hiking. I feel a little better today than I did yesterday, but after dinner I’m instantly tired. I take a quick shower and then it’s off to sleep.