Ben Nevis Weekend

Saturday 22 - Monday 24 August

Day 1
Travelling - flying from Manchester to Inverness
Car - we picked up the car at the airport, I hadn't thought to take my credit card, fortunately Donna had!
Cawdor Castle - we drove to Cawdor Castle as it was fairly near the airport. We walked in the woods, went into the castle, had tea and soup in the cafe. Walked in the woods again and wandered around the flower garden.
We travelled to Fort Wlliam following the A82 along Loch Ness, it took a couple of hours to get there, the road was busy.
The B&B had a view of Ben Nevis from one of the bedroom windows.
We went into Fort William to get something to eat. We walked down the High Street passing a number of eating places, they were all pretty busy. Haggis and tatties were on the menu at the pub.

Day 2
Walking up the mountain
The decision - to go or not to go?? We looked at the weather forecast when to got to the Glen Nevis visitor centre but it was not helpful. Then we asked the man at the information desk what he thought - he didn't want to put us off having a go!

We were still umming and ahhing when we went back to the car whilst we put on our gear. Eventually Donna said that we had to try since we had come all this way - so with this decision made we started our ascent.

It was trying to rain at the beginning of the walk but it wasn't cold, part way up the first stretch we took off the waterproofs as we were too hot. We stopped at regular intervals on our way up. We even attempted the sandwiches the lady at the B&B had made (she had made them the day before on white bread so we didn't have much hope of enjoying them!)

The views were incredible as we got higher up the mountain. We could see that it was raining on the other mountains across the valley. Eventually the wind started to blow very hard as had been forecast. We turned around and headed down. Looking at the map I think we got as high as 1000m which means we were fairly close to the top!

It took us a while to get back down the mountain, it suddenly rained as we got near the bottom. of course we had taken off our waterproofs so we got wet! Fortunately there was a cafe at the bottom of the hill so we had tea and cider.

We decided to try and book a table at the Glen Nevis Restaurant, they managed to fit us in so it was a good job we had called in on our way back to the B&B.
We enjoyed the meal.
We shared a scottish pudding - Cranachan

Day 3
We packed up our stuff, and made our way back to Inverness.
We made a number of stops on the way.
We decided to visit Culloden as it was not too far from the airport. There is a new visitor centre and we had lunch in the cafe. We went through the exhibition, and out onto the battlefield. I liked the animated Battle table.
Travelling home, flight back to Manchester.