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Day 5 – To Glencoe

Saturday 1st May

Tarbet Pier had busied up overnight. The A82 had noticeably more traffic also.

My plan had been to get up Ben Arthur (The Cobbler) today but a petty ankle complaint ended in postponement. I’ve had tendonitis in the Achilles for a few months now, usually nothing to bother with, just ice and it will loosen, but I had the feeling this morning that exercise would have made it worse. Besides, I’ve needed an excuse to get onto the bike.

I was away sharply, and though I said the roads were busier, there’s probably half as much traffic as on a typical summer day. The showers were more frequent today, often merging into an hour or more of cold rain, sleet, and occasionally snow.

I got the bike out on a section of the West Highland Way at Rannoch Moor, which even in cloud looks spectacular. The dog is perfectly at home with me riding, so long as it’s a steady speed, and all away from the road. That’s fine also, because I want to do some overnight trips when in Europe in autumn, so want him to get used to it. I think it’s not reasonable for him to do more than 3 hours either, but I can make that work for me also..

Today though it was just a short outing. My groins are incredibly stiff when I transition from running also, so it’s a question of building the time / distance up. Plus, it was cold. Back for lunch and radio sport, then onto the Clachaig Inn, which I had been looking forward to for a while. I’ve probably stopped there every time I’ve travelled this magnificent road, which is many, so it has some good memories. But it is struggling at the moment, in these covid times. It’s hard for a mountain pub to encourage customers when it’s snow showers and 3C. Plenty want to support it, though I doubt many will have more than a couple of drinks. The track and trace procedure is lengthy, and as I was considering a second stout the queue was close to 50 metres (each 2 metres apart of course..). Fortunately I had picked up a couple of decent local beers before so moved off to Am Tor to overnight, and a good job too, a grabbed the last place.

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