Day 4

It's been a day of contrasts. First off the bloke who does the ferry across Loch Ness couldn't do a second run this morning. So myself and my new friends Ali, Debbie and Mike were all stuck as we had to wait for parcels. In the end though things fell into place. We jumped onto a bus to Inverness (I didn't see Amy Pond though), had one of the best bacon rolls ever, the others said the same about the mini cooked breakfasts and then got a taxi to the other side of the Loch to where the ferry was to drop us off. At this point we said our goodbyes as we were all taking different routes. Hopefully we'll meet up before Montrose.

So by this time it was 11.30 and I had 20 miles to do, the first 14 on roads. The motivation was lacking but a couple of lunch stops, the first by river where I watched trout leaping about and the second at Whitebridge hotel for a liquid second lunch and motivation juice.

Eventually I got to the end of the road section and got off road up Glen Markie. After the first boggy climb the glen steadily rises and it has some cracking wild camping spots. I met Caburn at a very lovely spot a couple of miles up then glen and then found a rather nice spot myself a mile further. I've managed about 18 miles and when I stopped at 8.00 it was still warm enough to get in the nip and have a wash in the stream. Just.