June 17 and 18 -
me in it.
June 17-Morning brought sun and everything is better when the sun shines:). Lots of interesting bird calls and flutters. Feet still sore this morning - hope that improves over the week as the lactic acid is worked out and pack gets lighter. Second pair of socks still wet- will see if I can work out how to air dry them today, but rain is forecast:(
Terrible scenery- too much logging. Camped at An Dubh Lochan outside of Fersit. 1% battery left. High points of day: Not many as the Scottish Forestry Service appears to be very aggressive and most of today’s route looked like a comet hit the forest - lots of cut, downed trees with nothing replanted - extremely ugly and depressing. A few days ago I met some girls doing their “Duke of Edinburgh” (evidently, it is common for young people to do outdoor projects and they can earn something similar to a US Eagle Scout) - they asked me what could be improved. I should have said that the forests should be culled better. It’s clear that these were all newer forests as they were boring in their similarity. Then great swaths of trees were cut and no replanting.
There were some nice things - beautiful wild rhododendrons and Moy lodge. Also found a great place to camp for the night. Net/net - if I was going to cheat on my route - this would be the part to hitch a ride and skip!
June 18- all is wonderful because will be finishing up the East Highland Way at Spean Bridge and cut over to the next route: The Great Glen Way. Had a mostly sunny day today which was great. I realized that having a solar phone charger with me was pretty stupid - not enough sun available - and the thing is heavy. Shipped that off today:), one less thing to carry! Was only able to charge my phone to 60% so had it off most of the day, using “dead reckoning” as much as possible. Lovely scenery made up for yesterday. In general haven’t seen much really wild life - saw a deer yesterday, various rabbits, and a hawk today, but the rest of the animals were domesticated.
When I got to Spean Bridge I went right to the shop for hot milky tea, cookies and scones with clotted cream - I was happy, warm and dry once again!
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