Ladies Backpacking trip!

Just back from our inaugural Ladies Backpacking UK trip, and it was fantastic!

I grew up looking forward to the summer that I would be 12 years old so that I could finally join in on my family's Ladies Backpacking trip in the North Cascades. Alas, I still have never been on that annual trip. This has been a source of sadness for me, so this year I decided to start my own version here in the UK. We chose the Knoydart peninsula of Scotland as our destination and we had a blast planning it, looking forward to it, and finally doing it.


Day 1: Flew from Gatwick to Glasgow, arriving at 7 pm. We met Chris who flew from Munich and had been waiting for us several hours. We rented a car and drove 3+ hours to Fort William where we checked into a backpackers hostel.

Day 2: Drove to Morar, left the car in the cemetery (figured it was a safe place to leave it), and headed off along the shore of Loch Morar with the goal of reaching Tarbet by 3:00 so we could get on the 3:30 pm ferry to Inverie we had booked.

 It was a gorgeous day and we did make it to Tarbet in time to meet the ferry, though we had to take a little dingy to get out to the ferry which was hilarious in itself.

 We found our way to the campsite at Long Beach, and after setting up our tents on the lovely grassy site, we walked to the Old Forge pub (mainland Britain's remotest pub!) for dinner. We met the owner, Jean-Pierre, and had a nice meal there before going back to the campsite to have a cozy campfire and then sleeeeeep. It started raining around 10 pm and rained all night.

Day 3: We had breakfast under the overhang at the communal shelter at the campsite as it was raining, and then we headed out for our day's walk across the peninsula to camp near Doune. 

We walked along the coastline looking out at the Isle of Skye across the water and made our way down to Doune in the late afternoon.

 We found a place to camp in a grassy hummocky area on the little peninsula around the bay from the Doune restaurant, and then we walked over for dinner. Turns out that tonight was 'prawns' on the menu and the staff laid out a full spread in a beautiful artistic manner. They served delicious food and nice beverages at very reasonable prices, and we had a great evening!

Day 4: We were invited back to the restaurant for breakfast so we took that offer, then packed up camp and set off to walk back to Inverie via the wiggly coastline. We discovered as we were dismantling the tents that there were hundreds (or more!) of ticks on and around us. Eeek! During the course of the day, we took turns checking and removing ticks from each other before they got too stuck in.

 

 We saw stunning vistas and gorgeous little sandy bays along the way that beckoned us to skinny dip again (as we did the first day in Loch Morar), but in the end we needed to turn up the speed in order to meet the 3:00 ferry to Mallaig. I managed a cheeky dip by myself before we got to civilization, but it was a quick one.

 And although Inverie looked soooo far away, we did manage to get there with enough time to fit in half pints all around at the Old Forge one last time.

 Then we caught the ferry to Mallaig, phoned a taxi on the way, and got a lift from Mary the taxi driver back to our blue car at the Morar cemetary. 

We hopped in and drove 3 hours to get to the Glasgow area where we had booked into a spa hotel for our final night of adventure. We stopped in Glenfinnan on the way (where the Harry Potter bridge is located, as well as the famous landing /launching spot of Bonnie Prince Charlie).

 What a great trip!
Now to start planning next year...