At just over 16 miles and with over two thousand feet of elevation gain, today's walk is one of the longer days of our itinerary. It also probably everyone's last day as there's no possibility of breaking the journey and yesterday's itinerary from Kingshouse to Kinlochleven also had no obvious rest stop for those without a tent.   In terrible conditions it is possible to shorten the route by taking the military road as it forks beside the ruins of the old toll house above Lundavra. This route leads more directly to Fort William and shaves three miles from the journey, but that would mean missing out on Glen Nevis and (if we are lucky) a view of Scotland's mightiest mountain. The pipes for the hydro-electric power station snake down the mountain behind Kinlochleven The Way climbed rapidly out of the town and over a mile we scaled seven hundred feet. Soon we have a view over the Loch and back to the town.  Carrying on, we walked along the Lairigmor , or the Big Pass,

The view looking east from the top of the Devil’s staircase is a vast panorama of mountains and valley.   I did say that from this point is might be possible to gather a better picture of the caldera and maybe, if you have a working knowledge of geology, it is possible to pick out the tell-tale features of a collapsed volcanic ring. However I can only take my hat off to the Victorian pioneers who came to this conclusion, when it would have been a lot easier to explain the whole process at some other site that hadn’t experienced further volcanic activity and then had glaciers crashing through the entire landscape, thereby obscuring the original structures.   Although this is the point where the original fracture occurred that caused the volcano, this is no longer the centre of the caldera, we are in fact on the northern edge. Looking east, the glacier crashed through the walls, flattening the caldera.  It rises up above the Glencoe mountain resort and then heads to Stob Dubh to the sou

The geology of Glencoe is so complex and varied that I almost dare not speak of it. It is famous for being the first recognised caldera volcano and my first thought on looking around was how? It is not obvious to the lay person that this landscape is a collapsed cauldron and the geological events that have occurred since, such as the movement of the land from the southern hemisphere to the north and the numerous collisions with continents that happened along the way, have deformed the circle and made it a mangled ellipse. The subsequent ice ages have sliced a deep valley through the caldera walls, further obscuring the landscape. The Glencoe mountain resort on the very eastern edge of the caldera, is maybe not the best place to appreciate the geology. On today’s route the West Highland Way heads down the glen, following the scrape of the glacier on its slide to the sea, until the route turns to climb the Devil’s Staircase. However the top of the Devil’s Staircase lies under the peak of

Meet the Jacobites (with a bit of the tragic history of Glencoe) Jacobite hopes Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons This is a really complicated part of the history of the British Isles and although I'm paraphrasing madly here, there's quite a bit to plough through in order to get some understanding of the Jacobites and why the massacre at Glencoe was so significant.  King Henry the VIII gets a pretty bad press these days for his treatment of women. What tends to be forgotten is that he was, almost exclusively, the architect of some of the most divisive royal, religious and political events witnessed in these Isles for over two hundred years after his death.    Portrait of a young King Henry VIII circa 1515-20 Anglesey Abbey He was a second son and as a youngster he was well educated. Unlike Arthur, the first son who was destined to be King and thus was deemed to be infallible and therefore not in need of an education. Then fate lent a hand and Henry became King at the age of

The Gaelic poet Duncan Ban Macintyre was born and raised on the southern side of Loch Tulla in  Druim Liaghart .    When he was young he courted the daughter of the Landlord of the Inveroran Hotel,  Màiri bhàn òg.  In his poems he observed the busy lives of the villagers; farming, hunting, fishing and weaving; the social life of the village, of fairs, music and song. His works captured the essence of  a living vibrant community. Coming down to Inveroran Inn On a bright sunny day such as today it would be easy to image that this place could be busy with people going about their business, more difficult to understand how they would cope in the depths of winter. But people did subsist, although admittedly the living was difficult. The Highlands was thronged with crofters. For the land owners there were better ways to make money than rely on the meagre rents of their tenants and (especially after the '45 Jacobite rebellion) ridding the land of the quarrelsome Jacobites and farming shee