An old oak at Beauly Priory, and the view over Kiltarlity from the Beauly road
Day 46 - Wed May 20th. 6 days to go and counting. Today we faced 26 miles of road walking, mostly on A roads, which Alistair told us would mostly be pretty quiet and easy to walk on, but it is much nicer walking without traffic. We set off in bright sunshine, down our road with its neat houses, many of which are B&Bs. Then onto the main road and across the bridge over the River Erick next to which lies The Loch Ness Monster Centre and Exhibition. This is garishly advertised with huge bill-boards and we weren't tempted to enter. I had found a route that avoided a dog-leg on the main road which would be a difficult walk without a pavement. The route took us up the hill at this point. In Scotland, you have a 'right to roam' anywhere that there is not a good reason to do so, but it means that 'rights of way' as such are not marked on the map as they are in England. We have found, in fact, that you cannot rely upon paths on the map that are not actual routes: they may be over-grown, or closed, or have changed. So in this case, all we had to guide us were lines that more-or-less matched the ground. The first bit was a path that had shrunk from a route you could drive to a woodland path. However, we navigated this OK, then it should have carried straight to take us to the main road. HOwever, things had changed and there had been some new housing developments so the road went through to those, up a steep hill. At the top of this I realised that we had gone wrong and my back-up route had been obliterated. I will need to inform the Ordnance Survey on my return!
Once we got back on the main road, all we had to do was follow it to Beauly. There was no actual pavement, but there was a grass verge for most of it and it wasn't busy until we got close to Beauly. The countryside was pleasant but all you really wanted to do was to get the miles done as quickly as possible.
Beauly is a nice little town on with a ruined priory and a pleasant stretch of river, however the afternoon's walk was not enjoyable at all: just a lot of road with enough traffic to mean that you had to stay very alert in the sections where there was no footway. There wasn't a lot to see, apart from passing through two villages, crossing a couple of rivers and the light and clouds on some hills to the west. We are very far north now, and the weather can be very unpredictable; there was some snow remaining in streaks on the hills, and at one point late in the afternoon it got very cold and started to hail heavily. Luckily we were inside a pub at Dingwall at the end of our day, but you never take the weather for granted.
Dingwall is quite a sweet town with some fine stone buildings and a real character of its own. It is on the Cromarty Firth (we entered the county of Ross and Cromarty today) and has the huge Ben Wyvis (1006m) as a backdrop to the north-west. I will not be climbing this, however, as it is too remote and difficult to access. The weather forecast is also not very good.
Yolanda came to ferry us back to our B&B and tomorrow we decamp to a self-catering place at Tain on the Dornoch FIrth. Tomorrow's walk will take us over this firth on minor roads, following a cycle route.
Finally, we are into our last few days, and working hard to see the challenge through: this isn't easy! So, if you haven't made a donation towards Precious Lives, and are not planning to do so when we complete, PLEASE COULD YOU CONSIDER MAKING A DONATION NOW, or once we've finished by logging on to www.justgiving.com/johndrinkwater. Thank you very much.
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