Cape Wrath Trail - Rhiconich

Quinag from Inchnadamph in the evening.

After a good nights sleep, a substantial dinner and a large cooked breakfast at the Inchnadamph Hotel, the path took me uphill over the bealach (col) below Glas Bheinn then down to Loch Glencoul.

Looking South across Glencoul at Quinag.

It was misty at first making the section after the col an interesting navigational challenge.

However, the path wins Footpath of the Trail Award for its inconspicuousness, its good surface and its gentle gradient.

On the way I passed Eas a’ Chual Aluinn. The name is an English mangling of the original Gaelic which translates as 'waterfall of the beautiful tresses'. At 200m high, this is the highest single-drop waterfall in Britain and when in full flow it is over three times higher than Niagara Falls. A local legend is that a woman threw herself off the cliff to avoid being married to a man she did not love and that as she fell her tresses spread out behind her forming the waterfall.

Eas a' Chual Aluinn

Then after Glencoul Bothy the path roughly follows the line of the Cambrian Quartzite next to the Glencoul Thrust. No. It isn't true that the Glen Cool Thrust is a dance move made famous by a groovy Folk Singer from Kinlochbervie!

This image from http://www.visitsutherland.org/glencoul-thrust-british-geological-survey/ shows how ancient Lewisian Gneiss has been forced on top of younger Quartzite.

At Glencoul Bothy, where I stopped for a break, I met Pierre, a French Canadian doing the CWT. At Glendhu Bothy I met Antoine and Nadine, a French couple who were doing the CWT from Inchnadamph to Cape Wrath in very short stages because they had Artur, their 20 month old son with them! They had him walking as much as possible because he was very heavy to carry.

After a night at Glendhu Bothy, with it actually raining, the next stop was a wild camp by Loch Stack, below Ben Stack. Where Robin Cook the Labour politician who resigned from the Cabinet and as Leader of the House of Commons over the Iraq War, died in 2005.

Ben Stack is a Graham

The next day was a relatively short one alongside the Rhiconich River to reach the Rhiconich Hotel but quite rough walking.

From Rhiconich you can see Foinaven, at just under 3000ft this is a Corbett and like Arkle that I walked past earlier it had a racehorse named after it.

Arkle from the tent by Loch Stack

Foinavon, ridden by John Buckingham, was a rank outsider at odds of 100/1 to win the 1967 Grand National, and his owner Cyril Watkins had such little belief in his chances that he was not even at the course.

Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking Guinness twice a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and the story goes that he received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'.

We are now in Sutherland where some of the worst Highland Clearances took place. This story from Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances by James Hunter shows that they didn’t always go quietly.

[Like] the fate which overtook Sheriff-Officer Donald Bannerman when he and two colleagues, Alexander Ross and Alexander MacKenzie, attempted to serve eviction notices on people living in a place called Gruids.To get to Gruids, the three men had taken the ferry that made regular crossings of the River Shin a little way downstream from the present-day village of Lairg. As they approached the Gruids bank, the ferryman, John Murray, well aware of who his passengers were and why they had made the long journey from Golspie, remarked – sarcastically – that a warm welcome doubtless awaited them.

Hearing this, all three asked to be returned to the opposite shore. Murray, however, declined to oblige. Left with no alternative but to disembark, Bannerman and his colleagues did so – only to see, as Bannerman put it, ‘a number of persons, mostly women armed with sticks and cudgels, making towards them’. Soon, said Bannerman, this crowd – about a hundred strong – ‘violently seized’ him. The ‘precepts of removing’, as the sheriff-officer called the documents he had hidden about his person, were quickly found. Then, while one or two of his assailants went to fetch (from a nearby home) an already burning piece of fuel that could be used to kindle a fire, the rest of the ‘mob’, young women to the fore, ‘stripped him naked ... threw him down, and bound his hands behind his back’.

The weather has continued to be incredible, if a little windy and it's hard to believe that I am nearly there!