After leaving the hostel, we travelled to Fort William and set up camp in a lovely campsite, beside Lock Eil.
Apon arrival my parents, who were told at booking in, told me that porpoises, seals and otters had all been spotted nearby. Now, being a major lover of animals, and avid photographer (with otters being my favourite animal above all), this meant a lot to me. And so, every morning while we were there, I got up early (about five in the morning) to try and get the best chance of spotting them.
I am not a morning person at all. I despise mornings, and when I am woken up I can get quite possessive, and so quite violent, about my duvet…
But this was different.
Even though I came back afterwards and slept until around nine or ten, every morning was quiet, calm and midge-free.
While I never saw an otter or a porpoise, and only got a fleeting glimpse of a seal, the beautiful serenity and the just perfectness will always stay in my mind.
Before tackling Ben Nevis, we went for ‘gentle and short’ walk to… well we still have no idea. By gentle, the overpriced book meant boring, because it was essentially just walking a long a private road which happened to go alongside a loch.
Not that we could see it however, as it was blocked by trees for most of the way…
At the start of this walk, was a rather spectacular waterfall, where we stayed for a short while (a perfect opportunity to take ‘arty’ photos!)
We only saw one other person along this walk, after the waterfall though, and he looked just as surprised to see us as we were to see him!
We decided to turn back once the path opened up into a glen-like place with a broken-down house somewhere in the middle – here we stopped for a while as my mum carried on to see if it got a little more interesting… It didn’t, so we turned back!
(If you look very closely in the last photo, you can see my younger brother far in the background (the black blob). He went off to find a seat and apparently that was the closest one he could find!)
On our last morning (we stayed for three nights), my mum and I went for an early morning kayak instead of me going back to sleep, and the views surrounding the cam loch were incredible.
In the distance in one direction, Ben Nevis towered over all in misty stunning splendor. And when coupled with the glassy lake, and the kayak passing silently through the water, it really was stunning. As we passed the other campers just getting up for breakfast, I felt a calm peacefulness descend over me as I paddled along, creeping forwards to make the least amount of noise possible so the quiet brilliance was not disturbed. I regret majorly that I hadn’t yet worked out a way to take my camera on the boat with me, however, the memories will always be there in my head, like a small snapshot of their own kind.
That was sadly, the last moment on the lake, and it was incredible. Later on, when the campsite was cleared and everything packed up into the car, including us, we started on out journey to the place that I’d been imagining for years – The Isle Of Skye.
Ioukuoi 