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| Russell Rolls in to Inveroran |
With the day now at its hottest, Alison and Karen were grateful of the shade in the forest on the initial route out of Crianlarich. There were quite a few walkers on this short stretch and their unanimous opinion seemed to be that Karen and Alison were crazy running in that heat! A short time later they emerged at the A84 crossing at Ewich where Karen returned to the bus mindful of the 8 miler still to come. As the next section to Tyndrum had a few easy to miss junctions, I ran with Alison to act as navigator and gate opener. The pace was quite swift as this part of the course is all very runnable and with me running ahead to open the many farm gates, there was no rest for Alison! Very soon we arrived in Tyndrum and the uphill finish to the A84. As this is a busy road, the changeover is a shout across the road rather than a tag to set Stephen Phimister on his way on his first solo leg on the WHW. After what seemed like 5 minutes of trying to cross the road, eventually the most official looking Harrier (Geo) stepped out to stop the traffic and let us across to the bus and nutrition in the form of ice cream and coffee from Brodie's Shop. Back on the road we found ourselves in the midst of the cycle stage of the ongoing ultra challenge which looked like quite a risky business cycling on such a busy road with so much scenery to distract drivers.Talking of scenery, we soon spotted Stephen high on the hill to the right on one of the most spectacular stages where the runner feels so tiny in this vast landscape.
On arrival at Bridge of Orchy, the bus emptied and the team split into those in need of refreshment in the B of O Hotel and Ruth's support team who assembled for a second time and with some new recruits, many of whom set off in advance, presumably to make sure there were no closed gates, stones on the path, etc. Meanwhile Stephen had a moment of concern when he arrived at Bridge of Orchy Station, thinking this was the changeover but finding no Harriers. Fortunately he carried on down the hill to the main road where Ruth was waiting to start the up and over stage to Inveroran. Still full of energy, Stephen immediately struck up a friendship with a German tourist, rivalling George for the amount of personal information he managed to extract from this guy in only a matter of a minute (former marathon runner, from Hamburg, dodgy knees so now just runs 10k's, etc, etc) despite only limited English. However, the friendship came to an abrupt end with Stephen trying to bundle the guy over the bridge wall when the tourist mentioned the wrong Glasgow football club. Welcome to Scotland! We did however redeem ourselves by pointing the group of German tourists on the correct path to Inveroran; they were heading on yet another wrong road to Oban (there are a few).
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| Advance party Mary & Alison reach Inveroran. |
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| Ruth and Geo approach the changeover |
At Inveroran, Stuart Waugh was primed and ready to go on the infamous Road to the Isles leg, aka Rannoch Moor, which I assured him was no more than 70 minutes of running. Ruth arrived sandwiched by her support team and Stuart was off. The risk assessment required that we sent the minibus on ahead of Stuart to block off the road to Oban before leaving him to enjoy the isolation of Rannoch Moor.
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| Eddie marks the point of no return as Stuart approaches the gate to Rannoch Moor |
Always capable of running to the limit when injury free, Stuart arrived at Black Rock Cottage bang on the predicted 70 minutes despite declaring this to be the roughest surface he had ever run on, requiring 100% concentration for most of the route and a whole load of strength to handle the three quarters up hill, last quarter downhill trail. Russell had claimed the short leg to Kingshouse and this was a sensible choice given recent surgery (and goodness knows how many bacon rolls). With several earlier stages as warm ups, Mary was now on her own leg to the foot of the Devil's Staircase. Although this leg looks as though it should be flat, it is in fact overall uphill. Given that Mary ran the Edinburgh Marathon 6 days earlier, it was almost unbelievable the quantity and pace of Mary's running on the West Highland Way and this 4 mile leg seemed no problem at all.
As I have now run out of photos, I shall finish the tale and provide the stage times when I receive the pictures of the last few stages.
Alan
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