Our last two nights on the West Highland Way we spend camping in the wild. Not that it was really wilderness or anything – we even had a pint of beer in a pub which was not even 100 m from our tent. The only problem we had while cooking and setting up the tent were the many midges flying around us. We were tempted to buy midge repellent for the last night, but decided against it. We just had to be quick on everything.

From Kingshouse to Kinlochleven, the second last part, it was only 14 km, so we arrived quite early. Since the last stretch would be the longest and since we didn’t know about camping possibilities along the way, we pitched our tent right past Kinlochleven. And because there was nothing much to do we went to bed at 8 p.m. That way we were still able to get up at 5.30 a.m.the next morning.

Getting up early was really important for the last part, which was 24 km (and 750 m up and down) to get to Fort William. As we walked into town we met the Germans again, who had visited the brewery with us on the first day. However, after a short while we realized that we were not yet done with walking for today – our next hostel was about an hours walk away, in one the suburbs of Fort William… The possibilities of taking a train or a bus didn’t occur to us as we thought it would be closer.

Wednesday was our day to relax. It started really great with a real English breakfast. Then we took the train to Mallaig, a small town on the coast. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t as nice as predicted and we couldn’t find the beautiful sandy beach that was promised. We did enjoy some fresh fish and chips though!