Day 5 (Christmas Day \0/) Invercoe

Molly seeing what Santa brought, Dobby not impressed and
looking for the next one.

So here it is, Christmas day. Or anti-Christmas Day. Santa had visited during the night so the dogs had their stockings filled to the brim, Jim and I must have been too naughty this year. Cheeky git drank the Sherry and ate the mince pie though. Dogs seemed pretty happy with their loot and we decided to have a lazy breakfast, no rushing out today before 9am!

Now a word of warning that you may find the next section disturbing. If you wear a woolly hat for an extended period with high necked coats and hoodies there is a tendency for you hair to become one huge ball of matted mess at the back of your neck. Desperately needing help with the problem I had to turn to Jim who spent five minutes brushing my hair like some kind of serial killer. It really was quite creepy. 'Maybe we should shave it all off?'. We both agreed that bald would be better than repeating the experience.

So Jim pulled out his skills again and I returned from the shower block to this fantastic sight. Nowt like egg & bacon sarnies on Xmas morning. After devouring breakfast I went outside for a quick wonder down to the front of the site at Loch Leven. I stopped for a second and took a few photos and realised I was smiling. This is what it's all about, it really was brilliant to stand and look out over the water, hills behind me and feel like I hadn't got a care in the world. Clearly I wasn't the only one as a fellow Motorhomer with his dog and ipad sat on the bench and we both exchanged a knowing 'Merry Christmas!!'.

The best thing about all this is not having the pressure to have a 'great' Christmas. It's almost forced upon you by the media and advertisers that it should be a wonderful time and you must conform to the clichés buy loads of gifts and spend a shed load of money or you'll have a shit experience. We didn't exchange presents at all, Jim bought me a lens back in September that pretty much covered Christmas, Valentines Day and my Birthday! I wanted to get out and do a walk on Christmas Day, I had originally looked at Blackwater Reservoir but it was a very long walk and I wasn't sure that The Dobster would make it, so I settled on Steall Falls instead. For those of you that don't know the falls are just along from the Ben Nevis Range and were featured in the Harry Potter movies (mainly the Quiddich stadium aerial shots) so a walk and something to photograph seemed like a no brainer.

Jim peering out the window!

The road to the start of the lower falls walk was absolutely breath-taking and I think we only saw one other car the entire drive. I was stopping constantly to take pictures and the dull grey day began to brighten up a little which just made everything that little bit more spectacular. It's one of those roads that you see on Top Gear but never seem to find yourself, but this time however it was all mine to burn up in my erm, Fiat Escape Motorhome. Towards the carpark the road becomes more and more narrow with just a single track and passing places, crossing some weight restricted wooden bridges that looked like they were made of plywood, so I started to get a little concerned that we wouldn't be able to turn around. No need to worry however at the carpark at the end is quite large with bins etc. and an obvious walking start point. I was surprised at how many cars were in the car park, given we had hardly seen a soul on the road, looking around however it was mostly foreign tourists, either the Sherpa's Winter break or al-Qaeda Christmas training camp. Not sure which. (I jest, I jest!!!)

Easy one boot walk according to walkhighlands :/

Now I have been using the Walkhiglands pages a lot whilst planning this trip and I'm not sure who writes the reviews but I'm beginning to think it's some ex-SAS fella who carries crampons and ice axes with him at all times. Grading this walk as a one boot 'Easier walks, mostly on well defined paths, with no special difficulties.' means he clearly didn't do it with heavy camera equipment and two rather difficult dogs, one that wants to pull you through it as if it's the Dog Sled World championships and the other who thinks a strenuous walk is to her food bowl and back. I certainly wouldn't say this is an 'easy' walk and whilst the path is clearly defined, slippery rock formations and sometimes having to walk through fast flowing water falls next to a sheer drop made things rather tricky. If you have any sort of disability, are elderly or with small children I certainly wouldn't recommend it. The sign was a dead give-away at the beginning.

The 'clear well defined path' slippery as hell with 100 ft drop lol

10 minutes in and the strain was beginning to show - Jim clearly not believing I had done any research whatsoever. I was getting annoyed too, in parts I needed two hands to navigate the rock formations and the sound of your £1400 lens banging off a rock face is soul destroying. However, we persevered on. After about 25 minutes we rounded a corner and got our first glimpse of what all the effort had been for. A valley came out of nowhere and stretched along into the distance with the falls directly ahead. The path became much easier and aside from the odd water trench that you have to step over (or go around in Dobby's case) we began to enjoy ourselves. As we got closer to the falls I got my gear out ready to take some slow exposure shots and Jim let the dogs off their leads to explore. It was only then that we noticed all of the broken beer and wine bottles that previous campers had left strewn around the place.

What a total disgrace to come to somewhere so beautiful and treat it with such disrespect. Had to tether the dogs again for fear of them cutting themselves and manoeuvre carefully around the broken bottles to setup the tripod. I'm sure thousands of photographers have done this before me, I have even done this a few times in the past and clearly didn't learn from it, but I set up the tripod and then looked at the bottom of my camera to find that the base plate wasn't there. In fact it was happily attached to my other camera in the Motorhome. Argh!    

Took some rubbish shots with the camera lent on my bag and them the rain came in as if to punish me further. It was pretty windy and not a good idea to be wet and cold for a long time so after the obligatory 'Jim with dogs at attraction' shot we headed back. The cable bridge has been fixed since the summer but Jim refused to go on for a shot and the van was calling with warmth, soup and beef with Wensleydale sandwiches.

Snug as a bug in a rug!!!

The way back was easier as Molly was less excited and it was  a greater percentage of uphill rocky bits, unfortunately the rain started coming down hard so we were all soaked by the time we got back. I can safely say the dogs were absolutely knackered and didn't even stay awake to beg for a bit of beef. The wonder sacks in force again!! The worrying thing is that people were arriving to do the walk (that at least takes an hour with no stopping for photos) about 30 mins before sundown wearing jeans and fashion coats, some in daps. I'm not sure why these walks don't have signs advising walking times and appropriate clothing, surely that would be cheaper than CASEVACing someone from a mountain side?!

I then drove into Fort William to grab a quick cuppae with Fiona who I went to Dundee College with who was spending Christmas with her Brother in FW. Whistle stop tour of the van and then we headed back to Invercoe, I could see the potential of a good sunset and after 4 days of rain I wasn't wrong!

Loch Linnhe

Went back to the campsite for some Christmas Day Pizza and Christmas Curry. A really early cosy night and that was the day done!

Fay xx

P.S. Remind me about Nevis Radio tomorrow as it's simply hilarious.

P.P.S. I was just kidding about the dark skinned people being terrorists. A joke. I don't really believe all foreigners are bad. No twisted knickers necessary!

http://www.invercoe.co.uk/
http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fortwilliam/steallfalls.shtml

Steall Falls

Bad weather approaching

Cable Bridge