West Highland Way, Day 6 Crianlarich to Bridge of Orchy (16.9 km, ↑ 325 m, ↓ 356 m)
When I woke up today, I did not know that today would be our last day hiking the West Highland Way.
The night before had been rough. I had genuinely been feeling low, after going through the deforestation zone in the rain, seeing all the dead trees piling up without knowing if they will ever be replanted, and how long it will take for them to fully grow, maybe never, because we are simply too greedy. Then I could not sleep because for the first time, it was raining almost the entire night, and I thought that our tent would not survive the torrent, and we would wake up to our belongings being soaked and the vestibule full of water. When I actually woke up after forcing myself to sleep, the rain had stopped and everything was fine - our tent was wet but this was to be expected, and all our belongings are perfectly dry. At the end, I woke up genuinely feeling feeling better and refreshed. As soon as the coffee powered me up, I was ready to go.
What particularly excited me about the day ahead was the prospect of lunch. Just before Crianlarich, we had started passing signs for a restaurant advertising what they claimed to be award-winning fish and chips, and somehow the idea of having it for lunch was stuck with me throughout the night.
"What awards?" Dylan asked when I pitched the idea. He was rightfully skeptical, but I don't care. I know, sue me. I am not usually gullible when it comes to roadside advertisements, but food is my weakness at the best of times, and after hours of hiking through the mountains in the rain, I was not exactly operating at my most discerning. Also, they knew exactly what they were doing, putting those signs there. That is not on me, okay?
The only issue was that the restaurant is located in Tyndrum, which was just a short, maybe 5 km walk from our camping spot. This means we would potentially have a very early lunch. I'm not sure if a 11 am fish and chips is acceptable, but we decided to just screw it and stop by the restaurant whenever we get to Tyndrum.
The walk towards Tyndrum was mostly flat and pleasant. We walked past farms, seeing highland cows being hard at work while the sheep were just lounging around in the grass, some lying under the shades while some are clearly seeking the sun - they are just like us! Then past the farm, we entered the Tyndrum Community Woodland - an area maintained by locals who have been replanting the native trees that originally grew here. After the deforestation stretch, this felt like a genuine balm. I think it's partly why I enjoyed this section so much. The trees were young, they did not provide much shade under the sun, but they were there and would be there for hopefully many more years to come.
The area is full of local stories, too, from how The Battle of Dalrigh was fought in this area. Legend has it that Robert the Bruce, who was beaten during the battle, and his army threw away their weapons to a small lochan in the area, including his longsword, which may still be sitting at the bottom of it. It's not for lack of trying that no one has found it: according to one of the information panels along the trail, a team came with metal detectors specifically to look, and found nothing.
We finally arrived in Tyndrum and our first stop was of course none other than the restaurant. We arrived at 10 on the dot and they were not serving fish and chips at the time - I guess, fish and chips for brunch is not very acceptable. But they said they would start serving lunch at 11, so we thought might as well hang around and eat some of the cakes.
I am not a fish and chips connoisseur - this is the fourth portion of fish and chips I had ever tasted in my life - but according to my amateurish assessment, the batter was just right: not too thick, but not to thin and the fish tasted very fresh. I left the restaurant very happy. It had all worked out, as it tends to, if you want something badly enough.
Tyndrum was a nice spot to restock on supplies. We stopped by a store selling all kinds of food, souvenirs, camping supplies, stuffed animals - we thought ahead, the trail would get more remote over the next few days, so we grabbed some sandwiches and stuffed them into our already full backpacks. We continued walking northbound, entering a road that goes north parallel to the train track. According to my map, the trail would be mostly level until Bridge of Orchy. Knowing this, I slowed down and just looked around. The weather was perfect. We had brief, cheerful exchanges with cyclists passing by. We made small talks with other hikers, too, even if it was very briefly - one of them is doing a short day from Bridge of Orchy to Tyndrum, because he did 30 km the day before and needed a short day to rest his legs. It really felt like everything was falling into place and I was back on my groove.
The first sign of something wrong started to appear just when we were about 5 km away from Bridge of Orchy. Looking at the train track running alongside us, I had been working it out in my head to figure out if this was the exact stretch I had seen from the window eight years ago - whether those hikers I had watched from my seat had been standing somewhere around here. I was consumed by the thought that I was finally here, on the other side of that window. How a single moment that I caught from a moving train had quietly rerouted the course of my life - all the hikes since, all the people I had met through them, all the ways I had grown, and how everything would come full circle once I set my feet in Fort Williams, in just three more days. What a perfect story! I felt fantastic.
But unbeknownst to me, Dylan really was feeling the opposite of fantastic. I had started noticing he was walking slower than usual, and had gone quiet. We almost always stop to point out Baden-Württemberg's Nett Hier stickers when we spot them, and I'm fairly sure we walked past some without a word. I checked on him and he said something felt off. My instinct, optimistic as ever, was to blame the weather. It was noticeably warmer than the days before.
The ScotRail train finally came, and a group of hikers who were chilling by the trail were shouting, asking the train driver to honk, and they did. This is probably something that they are used to - hikers asking them to honk - every day during the hiking season, but it was nice that they still entertained us anyway.
Dylan was still not right. And then he stopped walking and threw up.
He felt better almost immediately afterwards, as it tends to happen after you get all the toxins out of your system. We both assumed the worst was over - Bridge of Orchy was close, the trail was flat, we were nearly there. We were sure we could make it.
When we reached Bridge of Orchy, we made a brief stop at one of the picnic tables behind a hotel building, and took an Irn-Bru break. Our original plan had been to stay the night here, but it had been such a good walking day - the throwing up notwithstanding - that we had been discussing pushing on. A FarOut tip had mentioned a beautiful campsite up on the hill, and Inveroran, just a bit further, apparently had some of the best food on the entire trail. At the time, neither option seemed unreasonable. Dylan said he felt fine. I felt great. In hindsight, we were being very optimistic.
On the way up the hill we ran into the couple we'd first seen on the brutal stretch after Rowardennan. They had arrived in Bridge of Orchy at midday and had gone up just for the view, despite already having a hotel room and needing to backtrack for the night. "It's really beautiful up there," he told us. "I nearly shed some tears."
We kept walking, thinking we would probably camp at the top, that the view would rival Conic Hill. Fifteen minutes in, it became clear this wasn't going to happen. Dylan was feeling off again, and it was soon obvious that the view other hikers had described - the one that had nearly made a grown man cry - was not something we would be seeing. Not on this trip, anyway.
At the time, our main focus was to get to a place where Dylan can rest comfortably, and a tent was definitely not it. We decided to backtrack to Bridge of Orchy and try our luck with the hotel. We weren't hopeful since places along the West Highland Way tend to be booked months in advance, but they had exactly one room left. We took it without much discussion and spent the rest of the afternoon in it.
I tried to distract myself by eating all the snacks in the hotel: shortbreads, crisps, the sandwich we had picked up in Tyndrum that were supposed to be for tomorrow's lunch. I didn't feel like going downstairs to the restaurant and making conversation with other hikers about how their day had gone. Besides, I had to collect all the files that I needed to claim my insurance, and also think about what we should do next. Should we stay or go somewhere else? I was fine physically, or thought I was, though I kept turning over the question of what had happened to Dylan, running through everything we had eaten, retracing the day.
At some point in the middle of the night, I woke up with a sudden and very urgent need to run to the bathroom. I had never felt anything quite like it. It didn't take long before I was projectile vomiting all the snacks and dinner I had eaten a couple of hours ago.
"Welcome to the party," he said from behind the door.
There are no pharmacies nor GPs in Bridge of Orchy, so we decided to take the train to Fort William and spend the remaining days there. My suspicion after hours of Internet research was that we had possibly contracted norovirus. The symptoms seem to align: the sudden onset, the way your body empties itself with almost comedic efficiency, the sore muscles that follow, and how it was all over within 24 hours which sounds quick - but boy, those 24 hours were hell. As for how, it could have been anything. My main suspicion was the water, despite the fact that we had filtered and boiled it. But it could just as easily have been a pub door handle. We thought if it could have been the fish and chips, but we quickly ruled them out because they are fried in very hot oil, the restaurant had thousands of good reviews and besides, they are award-winning.
It was strange to think that this was the first time I had ever been properly ill on a trail. There was norovirus circulating on the TMB the previous year and we had somehow escaped it. But this wasn't the first time that I had had to abandon a hike. Years ago, in the Andes, I injured my foot badly enough that I had to be brought down by horse. I had been hiking with a group but traveling solo through Peru and Ecuador at the time, so I was alone when it happened. The 12-hour difference with Jakarta made it worse; it was difficult for me to contact my family because of the time difference. It was also close to my birthday, and all I could feel was sadness. I felt like a failure.
It didn't stop me from hiking though. If anything, it made me more prepared: I started exercising to reduce the risk of injury, researched a lot about shoes, perfected my blister prevention to the point where I don't think I've had a single blister during my hikes ever.
So naturally, I kept looking for the lesson this time. The rational part of my brain says that if you hike often enough, something like this is simply a matter of when, not if. Bodies get sick, trails get abandoned, it is just probability.
But sitting in our hotel room in Fort William, I mostly just felt sad.
I have written in my Camino Portuguese posts before about how hiking strips everything back. When you go on these hikes, you are away from home without the noise of ordinary life - work, errands, and so on, all that remains are your thoughts. And my thoughts were telling me I had failed. I hate not finishing things.
Whenever I felt well enough to go outside, I would stand in Fort William and look up at the mountains and wish, very simply, that I was still walking. I ran through a million scenarios in my head: could I continue alone? could we come back? could we just take the train to the next section? Our flight to Berlin was still in a few days. But deep down I knew my body wasn't ready, and I couldn't pretend otherwise, despite the worst of it being over in 24 hours.
True to who I am, I keep looking for the big definitive lesson. The practical one is obvious: be more careful about where you collect your water, even when you're filtering and boiling it. But is that it? I guess sometimes things just happen on the trail. Shit happens. (Literally). That is also true in life in general. You make all the right preparations and something gets you anyway. Sometimes you get norovirus in the Scottish Highlands and you have to take the train to Fort William and down six bottles of energy drink in a hotel room and feel sorry for yourself for a few days, and then you go home. And then eventually, you start planning the next one. We took the flight home together - asymptomatic by then, more or less recovered - which is not the worst way to end a trip. Unfinished, yes - but together, and lucky enough to have a home to go back to. The trail will still be there, and so will we.
