Insh Lodge - Aviemore

Distance Walked: 14.81 Miles

Distance Overall: 103.01/82 Miles

The Final Stretch

We awoke to a beautiful sun shining into our tents heating our cold bodies from the brisk evening. The night had been cold by the Loch but the sky had been beautiful and clear. This morning felt different to every other morning, as we both knew it was the final stretch, today was the day we should reach Aviemore.

It was like a weight had lifted off us, we had booked a campsite in Aviemore and that was to be our motivation for the day, a hot warm shower and food that wasn’t cous cous or huel.

Both cosy in our tents, we set up the Fire Maple and got the coffee going. I was so excited that I was about to have the Pain Au Chocolats we swiped from the hotel the day before. Sun Shining on your skin, pastries and coffee with the view of the Loch from your tent, there's not much more that can beat this feeling.

Breakfast was completed, I had put on some music and sang to myself while we packed down and got ourselves ready for the day. We decided we would first walk back to Insh Lodge to make use of facilities, and maybe get another coffee. Our original plan was to get coffee from the little bakery in the post office but sadly it was closed on Mondays. We trudged on back over to the lodge and ordered coffee and to our delight, we were served by the same lady, she asked us if it had been a cold evening as she was worried about us. The temperature that night had dropped rather dramatically for spring, but we told her we were fine as we had the right kit for it. Although it was really sweet of her to ask and even remember us!

Coffee, window seat, it was such a relaxing start to what was going to be an extremely taxing day.

To Aviemore?

All finished up at the lodge we headed off and started our walk over to Aviemore, the first section followed some fields and then joined onto a quiet road. We approached a river and we heard a lot of commotion, so we went to have a look, as we did we saw people in rubber dinghies having the best time. The instructor saw us and shouted over ‘Heya! Are you doing DofE?’ myself and Sarah looked at each other and laughed, shouting back ‘No, we are doing the East Highland Way for fun!’ we conversed a bit more and then went on our way. It seemed the instructor had come from Aviemore, so we were certainly close.

We crossed the river over a bridge and headed up onto some fire roads, I decided to crack out the brownies we picked up from locals in Kingussie the day before who were raising money for their school. They were delicious, meaning they were likely not plant-based. We noticed that our path was turning into what seemed to be a boggy mess of a bike track. We carried on along it certain we had gone the correct way, but to our surprise we had not, yep we had taken a wrong turn. It wouldn’t be an adventure if we didn’t get lost.

We consulted the map and found that it was fine and our path still led to the same place it was just lower down and NOT a fire road which we were grateful for as a lot of this walk had been fireroad.

The path led out towards a loch, the sun was shining down onto the water and it was so quiet, that it felt like the perfect spot to have a snack. It wouldn't be much further until we reached Loch Eileen, which is where we knew the peacefulness and wilderness would start to end. Knowing this we sat for a short while by the loch taking in our surroundings, both extremely haggard and tired for the 8 days of consistent walking with the heavy backpacks. I chomped down half of those disgustingly heavy bulk bars, cursing that I chose them.

Goodbye Wilderness, Hello Reality

We carried on and headed towards Loch Eileen, perfect camping spots were abundant, and even a bothy, but we had already committed to a campsite. Plus we hadn’t reached Aviemore yet. After a quick loo break for Sarah, I sat by the loch and watched the ducks, mesmerised by the castle in the middle. I would have loved to go over and inside, not sure if this is permitted though, but I could imagine how beautiful it was in its prime, lit by candlelight.

Signs for Rothiemurchus forest and we’re back onto more fire roads we carried on trudging along, more and more people around, dog walkers, families etc. We knew we had left the wilderness behind for sure but with a spring in our step, we were making great pace, so it felt.

We finally arrived at a crosspath which pointed for Aviemore, what I hadn’t realised was the campsite was a little bit outside of Aviemore… so we walked to camp first. We entered the reception and were greeted by a fellow who seemed rather fed up with the rules imposed on him by the owners, they checked us in. More walking and eventually we found a spot, pitched up and ditched our bags… my gosh. The feeling of a free back was incredible, at this point we had already walked around 12 miles, and we both just wanted to stay here and not move.

WE MADE IT

We chugged down a coffee, got the motivation back up and headed into Aviemore. To our disappointment, we could not find a sign that said ‘Aviemore’ which we wanted to take a picture with, so we headed for food. Not even a sign that mentions the East Highland Way, it really was the unpopular sister to The West Highland Way.

Pizza and cider, what a fabulous celebration combination, the pizza was delicious and the cider too. I do think the cider went straight to my head as on the way back to the campsite we were both completely delirious and laughing over the dumbest things. Although I did spot an Aviemore Sign in the train station and of course forced us to have a photo by it.

We completed it, from Fort William to Aviemore.

Lying down in my tent, belly full, warm from a shower, I reminisced on the walk. It certainly had its ups and downs but I was looking forward to resting on our train to the Isle of Skye the following day.