Day 07 – Unknown Pleasures
On looking out in the morning I was surprised to see snow as it hadn’t seemed as cold as the previous night.
Today’s route was supposed to take me into the hills to the north, and then walk down Glen Banchor into Newtonmore. Instead I packed up slowly and set off along the road down the glen. Cold, snow, low cloud, bad leg - I wasn’t even tempted by the hills. I stopped after a while as it was cold enough for me to want gloves on.
If every day on the Challenge is interesting, some are less so than others, and gradually the celebrated Laggan Stores became a goal as desirable as any Munro. On my first visits to the Highlands I found the shops interesting; often they were just a room at the end of a croft, with a small wooden table displaying a cabbage, a Mars Bar and a loaf of bread. Nowadays if you can find a shop at all there might still be an element of this, but not the Laggan Stores, it’s packed to bursting with unknown pleasures. They’ll even heat up food for you, and across the road they have a room with tables where you can then sit and eat it. I ordered hot chocolate and something that looked like a pie, and promised that I’d be back for more shortly. Crossing the road I found another Challenger already in the eating room. Pie, a chair and Judith; how good can it get?
Being made of sterner stuff Judith disappeared into the hills after lunch, whilst I returned to the shop for the supplies I’d need to get me through to Newtonmore – still a good eight miles away down the road. Crossing the bridge I walked down the south side of the glen in the freezing drizzle. I caught up and walked with some of the others I’d been camped at Garva Bridge with, but left them at the MacPherson memorial.
The lane descended through trees to the River Truim.......
.....and then a short distance further on I found myself walking alongside the A9 which was a shock. A cycle route and then a B road took me into Newtonmore. I found the Mrs Os’ Newtonmore Hostel and received a great welcome. I wouldn’t normally stay in a hostel but I’d met Ali and Sue on my first Challenge and was keen to see what they were doing here. Ali and Sue had met on the Challenge in 2006, become good friends and keen Challengers, and…….well, as Victor Kiam nearly used to say in the TV advert “They were so impressed they bought the company”.
I must say, I was impressed too. Tea, biscuits, a woodburning stove and good company, although this last did create one awkwardness; my fellow Challengers were so incredulous that I was planning to sleep outside in a tent when there was still one bed left that I felt a right fool and snapped it up. Oh the vanity - better to have appeared a fool than to endure the night ahead, but more of that later.
Some of the other Challengers who’d been there when I arrived carried on their way and then Judith turned up with tales of cold river crossings. Ali had an enormous parcel waiting for me. I’m always amazed when receiving these parcels just how much unnecessary stuff I manage to cram in when sending them. I gave some to Judith, kept some, and sent some home. A shower and shave were good, so was a phone call home. As was often the case, the phone call to Challenge Control left me with the feeling that they were very surprised (and slightly relieved) that I was still alive.
All afternoon an increasingly worried Ali kept coming in and asking if Jan Ridd had turned up yet. As any reader of Lorna Doone will know, this seemed highly unlikely to happen, but in the early evening a very likeable chap called Freddy turned up whose email address was janridd@somethingorother. I could see that amusing incidents such as this would make hostel life very appealing.
Judith, Andy and I had dinner in the hotel across the road. The hotel seemed to be packed with Challengers, and Bob Garnett who I’d met at Morar came and chatted for a while. Andy had been in the hostel when I arrived and was suffering terribly from blistered feet. I believe he had to give up the Challenge following day.
What a cheery bunch we were returning to the hostel, little knowing what lay in store for us. I shared a room with Freddy, Giles and Andy, and at some time during the darkest hours I was woken by the sound of snoring. Not that regular, sleepy sort of snore whose comforting sound might send one back to sleep, but the sort that shakes foundations and echoes around the mountains. I spent what seemed like a couple of hours, but was probably four or five, alternately threatening to do some stealthy work with a pillow (a muffled cry, a struggle and then silence), and wondering if the world had ever heard such a sound before. I imagined Krakatoa was probably louder, but the closest I could think of in terms of timbre and volume were the sirens on the Titanic as she entered port, and I eventually went to sleep dreaming of the residents of Queenstown being shaken from their beds.
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