Day 5

No photos today, it's been a hard one. The wild camp last night was just brilliant. Clear blue sky and the temperature dropped. I ended up using both sleeping bags and a down jacket. Got everything in the big bivi that I didn't want to freeze solid and went to sleep. The morning dawned and I thought I would awake to a frozen fly sheet and water bottles, but no. Either all my equipment is broken or I'm getting soft, I've a funny feeling it's the later.

The camping spot was 6km short of the bothy where I was going to stop. When I finally got to the bothy around 9.30am I was so glad I didn't push on. It was in a very sorry state and in a boggy little hollow, the stove had fallen to bits and the sleeping platforms had been ruined. Reading the graffity on the wooden walls (western red ceder, worth a fortune!) some of it dated back to 1921, so for 90 years old it was in pretty good nick I suppose.

So today was 37km which took nearly 14 hours, a lot of which was proper wilderness walking, over peat bogs, across snow bridges and fording rivers. I'm totally knackered. But I'm in a hostel attached to a pub in Kingussie drinking very nice beer, eating peanuts and listening to rock anthems. I'm sleeping in tomorrow.