Crossing Smirisary hill I’m soaked through, have a pounding headache and it’s getting dark, it’s also much steeper than I expected and I slip alarmingly a couple of times due to fatigue. I collapse exhausted on a tussock staring dead eyed at the rain streaking horizontally in the head torch beam. I need to get into some shelter urgently and decide to camp here for safety even though it’s a very poor site. It’s a struggle to put up the tent as it’s whipped out of my hand by the wind and the loose boggy ground doesn’t hold the pegs so I need to tie the guy lines to heather. I scoop water from a shallow bog to cook dinner and to rehydrate which is probably why I have a headache, it can be hard to remember to drink enough in the winter. When I’ve sorted myself out I listen to music to forget where I am and awake having had a surprisingly rejuvinating night.

Survivors of the beech trees known as the Seven Men of Moidart, in commemoration of Jacobite folklore, Loch Moidart, Lochaber, Highland, Scotland.
Date of walk: 7/1/19

Smirisary Hill in a rain storm having being unable to find flat ground for the tent for the previous couple of hours. I also kept getting boxed in by deer fences. I ended up descending to this valley to get out of the worst of the wind, using the fence as a ladder in parts as it was so sleep.
I’m sure no-one else has walked the coastline as literally as you are doing, right on the shore at times! Makes me appreciate my bed!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Makes me appreciate mine too! I’ll take whichever is the easiest path and here the shore is so steep and overgrown the shore itself was easiest
LikeLiked by 1 person
And central heating!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hard work in winter for sure
LikeLiked by 2 people
it is but there’s always a great sense of achievement getting you and seizing the light when the days are so short
LikeLiked by 2 people