Day 6: Blackfold to Drumnadrochit, 15km (9½ miles)

[Continued from day five.]

The stretch between Drumnadrochit and Inverness doesn’t have convenient lodging available, so our itinerary has us hitching a ride with our luggage porter to the halfway mark and walking back to the same place we stayed last night. George is friendly and knowledgable (and apparently on the parliament for a whisky distillery), and drops us off high up on a plateau.

After maybe a quarter-mile of hiking, we spy the entrance to this campsite. It’s a bit early, otherwise we’d TOTALLY pop in for tea.

The trail meets up with a rather nice park with a sweet playground and public bathrooms (yay!), and then follows logging roads for a while.

Today we reach the highest elevation of the entire trail! Turns out that huge climb yesterday wasn’t even to the top! Fortunately we climbed most of the way here in a car, and it’s mostly downhill today and tomorrow.

There’s the northern end of Loch Ness in the distance. Today will be our last day to spot Nessie, so we keep our eyes peeled.

We descend into the woods again, and there’s a place where we can fill out a survey about the trail! We leave a suitably glowing review.

This seems like a perfectly serendipitous spot for elevensies. We crack into our generous lunches, and more awesomely weird crisps.

The woods are strangely silent today. We can’t even hear any birds.

A few miles later, we’re 500 feet lower, and out of the deep woods, and we spy the ruins of Urquhart Castle (“urk-it caw-sull”) across the bay!

Back into a wood, but this one is much less dense and spooky.

After trekking alongside some houses and farmland, we emerge onto the major road that will take us all the way back to Drumnadrochit.

…which is good, because right on the way is the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition! Not only is there a VERY 90s multimedia exhibit, but they have a whole room full of stuffed Nessies!

Today we also found out what the dogs have been up to. No good, that’s what.

[Continued: Part Seven.]