Our final two days of walking on the WHW took us from Bridge of Orchy to Crianlarich via Tyndrum. Still amongst the mountains but not as omnipresent and looming as the first 2 days.
Instead we walked through farmland and forest and glens, including a beautiful diverse revegetated community woodland crisscrossed with shallow rocky rivers and historical sites relating to battles of Robert the Bruce in 1300s.
There was also a research farm for sustainable land management in the Highlands which was peppered with interpretive signage – very useful for curious folk with constant questions. This farm also featured ancient remains of a priory and graveyard of St Fillan’s originally from 1200s. All very casual, there’s obviously just so much of it to go around.
The paths we have been following are steeped in their own history. Old droving roads to move stock up & down from the Highlands, the Military Roads built to help subdue the Jacobites.
I’ve had the most perfect reading accompaniment – Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane – the best recommendation thanks Marg! He documents his journeys along old ways throughout the world and writes so beautifully and evocatively.
… a beguiling idea: that walking such paths might lend you to slip back out of this modern world… wanderers spoke of the tingle of connection, of walking as seance, of voices heard along the way.
He also writes so passionately about landscape and country:
As I envisage it, landscape projects itself into us not like a jetty or peninsula, finite and bounded in its volume and reach, but instead as a kind of sunlight, flickeringly unmappable in its plays yet often quickening and illuminating.
