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[Trail blog is here]

We woke up nice and early at 5am after a very cold night.   There was a lot of groundwater flowing underneath the tent so the floor acted like a fridge panel!

After a nice oatmeal breakfast, we packed up in the pouring rain and headed along the ridge following the river up to Loch Gaorsaic.   The going here was pretty hard with lots of peat hag jumping up and down.   We tried to find a better route by going high but it didn’t seem to make much difference.  We were headed for a set of stepping stones at the base of Loch Gaorsaic which would allow us to cross to the North side of the river.

When we got to the location of the stepping stones, there were only a few stones showing with the others a few inches below the surface of the river.    I’d had reports from a few weeks back telling me they were completely submerged so we were overjoyed to see the water levels had come down.   A quick change into our River Walkers and we were both across without any mishaps 🙂

From Loch Gaorsaic, we continued on towards the youth hostel at Allbeithe.   On the way we bumped into a group of four women (Fiona, Francis, Mary and Mari).   We’d actually met them the day previously and they’d taken a different route choosing to avoid the falls.    The youth hostel at Allbeithe was a welcome sight – by the time we arrived our feet were quite soaked and we welcomed steaming mugs of builder’s tea (tea, white with lots of sugar).

While in the youth hostel, we bumped into Hamish who asked us if we were the "Bloody Idiots" for camping on the ridge :-)    From the hostel, the walk to Athnamulloch was un-eventful, following a LRT all the way.    Athnamulloch is a random set of buildings which contain Strawberry Cottage, a very posh looking Scottish mountaineering house.

We met a guy staying in the cottage and he told us we were welcome to use the barn which was a wood store for the cottage.  We all pitched up tent in the shelter of the barn and then hopped inside to make dinner.    Mountain House spag bol for dinner which was great.    Francis gave us a packet of Apple and Custard dessert which tasted like heaven.

Distance today: 15km making 31km total

Go on to day 3