Thursday 28th April 2016 Another horrid, cold night. Kept waking up and trying to curl up into a tiny ball to get warm. Getting out of the sleeping bag and then out of the tent required a good 30 minutes of preparation and psyching myself up for it. In the end, the need to pee won over the need to stay in a warm bed.
Oh. What. Freeeeeeezing. No more blue sky. Dark heavy black clouds and a biting Arctic wind. Yuck.
The pub was open for breakfast though. After a long hot breakfast. It was a quick take the tent down and pack up before getting too cold again.
Had everything packed up just as the first few flurries of snow starting falling. Sheltered in the campsite kitchen for a while, drinking tea and looking out the door. Very exciting, as I love snow, it's so pretty.
The snow was getting heavier.
What to do. German girl text her Scottish friend who was in the next town and said they had snow too, but were going to continue on. German girl didn't want to and decided to get a bus to meet her friend where she was going to finish at today.
I put more layers on and all my waterproofs, said my goodbyes and ventured out into the ever whitening landscape.
The whole of today was bleak.
It snowed ALL day. Blizzard like conditions up on the hills across to Inverardran. By this stage there was a good couple of inches lying on the ground and it was a guess where the path was in some places. Coming down to Tyndrum, the path crosses the road then river and then goes across a very exposed area of farmland. This was torture, as by now I had been walking in the snow for about 6 hours, soaked to the skin through my many layers and cold. So very cold in the howling wind and horizontal snow.
Trudge on and on. Stop at Strathfillan Wigwams farm shop for a cup of hot tea to warm myself up and try and get some feeling back in my hands. Would have been nice to be able to have stopped for the night here, but I wasn't for camping tonight and wanted to be nearer town to get some hot food for tea.
I endured the last few kms by imagining being warm and eating food! Stopped at Pine Trees Caravan Park, treated myself to a little camping pod. It had a heater and a kettle, ahhhhh.
Everything was soaking wet. Puddles formed from my dripping clothes and pack when I got inside. I had the internal shivvers. Made the mistake of sitting down on the stool in front of the heater, which was on at high.
Had to force myself out, to walk up the road to get food and stock up on supplies. The Green Welly Stop shop was still open, knew this would be the last shop until Kinlochleven, another 30 miles, so bought some chocolate and a dehydrated expedition meal. Then went next door and ordered a pizza to go.
Devoured the pizza in about 2 minutes when I got back into my pod. Yum. All my clothes were wet, apart from one T-shirt and a pair of cropped leggings. So put them on and in my flip flops, looking like a fool, carefully tip toed my way across the slushy snow path to the showers.
Luxury. So nice to have a hot shower after today. Although my feet didn't get much warmer for a good while after it. I also used the free hair dryer. Pure bliss.
Pranced back across the snow in my flip flops again and mopped up the floor of my pod, turned my wet clothes that were hanging up everywhere and called it a night. (Photo below taken the next day!)
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