West Highland Way: Day 6

Date: Good Friday, 6 April

Route: Inverarnan to Tyndrum

Distance: 12 miles

Accommodation: Glengarry Guest House, Tyndrum

If you were to do the “West Highland Way Highlights” walk you would miss out the stretch between Inverarnan and Tyndrum. Whilst I can see that this isn’t necessarily the most “away from it all” stretch of walking – it passes close to electricity pylons, train lines and both under and over the busy A82 road, which you can hear for quite a lot of the walk – it is still a good walk, with wide-ranging views of distant Bens, lots of riverside and woodland sections and a great walking surface, some of which is an old military road.

The walk begins alongside Beinglas Farm on a wide track, on which it is easy to overtake enthusiastic foreign youngsters with unfeasibly large and heavy-looking backpacks. The River Falloch accompanies the path, with occasional patches of rapids. The track climbs and descends steadily, with ever-changing views out over the hillsides, before climbing even further up to the left at a junction with the path to Crianlarich. Roughly half way along the route of the West Highland Way, this section gives you a lovely view across to Ben More and Stob Binnein.

The next section is 2½ miles of conifer plantation – a shady path amid the trees, with a carpet of pine needles and some handy rocks on which to rest and have a picnic lunch.

Once under a railway bridge on the other side of the A82, the Way briefly becomes a tarmac drive between sheep pastures, on the way to the ruins of St Fillan’s Priory, consecrated by Robert the Bruce, passing the river Fillan and the campsite at Strathfillan (with an encouraging advertising strategy: “don’t give up, you can do it, visit our shop in 750m” (!)).

After you have headed back under the road the next section is through Tyndrum Community Woods, which starts out with lovely riverside walking and contains a loch where Robert the Bruce may (or may not) have left his sword, as well as a reminder of the industrial heritage of the area in a clearing previously used for lead smelting, where nothing has grown for the past 150 years.

Once we have stocked up on provisions for the next few (remote) days, we head to our guest house, overlooking the lead smelting area – the friendly owners compensate for this with an offer of home-cooked banana cake as soon as we walk through the door.

 
So, maybe not one of the top 5 walks on the West Highland Way but a really enjoyable day’s walk nonetheless – and only a few raindrops yet again. By this point, we are past the halfway mark, both in terms of time and distance – it all gets wilder and woollier from this point onwards!