I sleep like the dead and awaken to mist rising off the loch and mountains beyond. The BBC reports rain straight on for weeks, but right now, anyway, it’s sunny. I’ve come to learn you can’t entirely trust the weather report.

We drive along the loch perfectly reflecting the surrounding mountains on a one-lane road with numerous passing places. No one can afford to be macho here; you simply have to pull aside to let others through. The lay-by is almost full of cars likely because as Sandra told us, this is a beautiful trail.

Definitely not at the start in muck and wet cutting through yellowing bracken. We’re so used to it now, we simply tuck in and climb, heading steeply up away from the River Carron.

It’s hot and humid and I’m soaked through with sweat in the bright sun. This can’t be right, I think.

And it’s not. The map which I hadn’t bothered checking has us on the other side of the river. It’s wild and rushing with no possibility of crossing except back at the car.

We try not to slip heading back and see the obvious public path sign taking us through gnarly, moss-covered oaks and ferns, changing color for the season.

Today is one more in a series of the Cape Wrath Trail “sampler platter.” The intention was to walk from Fort William to Cape Wrath in the western highlands and the going was pretty good until it got so rainy, we were forced to reconsider walking it all in one straight line, and rather take things piecemeal, walking out-and-backs to bothies where we’d be safer out of the wild weather. 

It’s not far at all to this bothy and on decidedly easier trail than nearly anything we’ve walked yet. It’s built up with stepping stones and a very easy grade. We easily talk the entire way, taking us less than an hour to reach a bridge missing many of its slats and finally the large stone Corie Fionnaraich bothy.

The bothy was built in 1913 for the fourth deer stalker of the estate, a Mr. K. Maclennan. A photograph shows a dapper balding gentlemen with a bushy mustache and his strongly built wife wearing a fox he killed just for her around her neck.

For his work maintaining the path and other tasks required of a fourth stalker (or hunter) he received the use of this house, sheep, a sheep dog, a cow or two, and a deer fence to protect their potato garden. It’s a lovely place looking back down the glen and tucked beneath several Munros.

There are two common rooms below with large windows and two above, though no bunks. We claim a room, planning to leave gear and continue up towards a loch. But just as we leave, it begins to rain.

I’ll pause here to remind us all that we have become accustomed to non-stop rain. It’s simply part of the experience. And yet Ted and I make faces at each other, saying why bother.

Again, being here at this bothy in the heart of the Highlands with a rushing stream and Munros in a row, we’re already ‘there.’

We sit at the window and make tea, just as six older people show up one at a time, drenched and happy for their walk, but ready for lunch out of the weather. We tell them what we’ve done so far and they say it was an extraordinary summer with no rain or midges.

<sigh>

I counter this is so different from anywhere I’ve been, I’m happy for the challenge – if I survive. As they leave, they promise to keep an eye out for my survival or demise and we laugh.

When the rain pauses, I waddle out in my flip flops, picking my way carefully down well placed stones to collect water. Two more drop in, young women in tights and strong boots who gave up a Munro 2/3rds the way up since nothing could be seen. They warn us about the stalkers and we realize we really aren’t supposed to stay here during stalking season. To this, the taller of the two tells me the client is quite fancy and likely wouldn’t stay in a cold, empty bothy.

Empty of whisky, sadly, but we have dinner and cook it up as the rain stops and mist creeps in, wiping out any trace of scenery. We take the chairs outside for a moment, before drizzle returns and chases us inside. A candelabra warms the dark corners and I fall asleep to the river’s song, hoping tomorrow might bring back the sun.

Two minutes to midnight, the door bangs open and a Scottish couple with the thickest accent walks in with bikes, loud and crashing.

“We’ve walked all the Munros and now we’re walking the Corbetts!”

They tell Ted the rain will be continuing and proceed to build a fire, so he grabs up our clothes out of the way. Friendly enough, but wow! Out biking in this weather at this hour? And so loud. (until 2:30 or so) A different world, this.

Ted tells me the man assures him no one can expect to sleep in a bothy. Not with them, one can’t. Funny, in the four others we had lovely, polite neighbors.

It was a rough night, but we escape the next morning in a downpour. The following day, the BBC’s weather page shows a picture of a cloud without any drops. Could this finally be a gift of a dry hiking day?

So much rain over so many days adds up and could make river crossings unmanageable. We decide not to risk walking all the way out to the next bothy, and instead make plans to reach it from the other side. If we can hike to a high point today where we can see it, I figure it counts as us walking the section.

We’re near Ullapool, a port town, white row houses facing the Broom Loch and the ferry building. Bits of blue sky peek out, the far hills coming into focus as the mist clears. The car park for walkers is near the forestry. A gate keeps out camper vans and I’m surprised to see so many cars and eager walkers, because, in spite of the forecast, it starts to rain again.

Not a problem, I decide, as I’m already suited up for the weather and becoming accustomed to it without (much) complaint. The ‘trail’ at the start is 4×4 track, easy to walk, but somehow impossible to navigate as I immediately charge us up the wrong hill.

Realizing we need to cross the river below, I backtrack muttering under my breath, find the bridge over a narrow and deep gorge, then lead us yet again up the wrong way.

I’d love to say I got us on track after that, but it would seem three times a charm as I march again right past the turn, realizing my mistake a few hundred feet of climb.

Realizing we need to cross the river below, I backtrack muttering under my breath, find the bridge over a narrow and deep gorge, then lead us yet again up the wrong way.

I’d love to say I got us on track after that, but it would seem three times a charm as I march again right past the turn, realizing my mistake a few hundred feet of climb.

The view opening up through the forestry.

All of this is in ‘forestry,’ managed land made up of Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce, thriving in this rain-drenched environment. It’s lovely walking through, fragrant and sheltered as the rain comes again. Didn’t the Beeb promise cloud only today? But the forests alter the view, obscuring the beauty of the rugged hills.

Soon we’re above, climbing steeply up and over into a kind of wide-open plateau. The huge Munros (mountains over 4,000 feet) surround, but at a distance, their hulk appearing and disappearing in the mist.

I turn on bog-trotting mode, seeing how long I can keep my feet dry with careful stepping on grassy humps and rocks. Once we reach a burn, all that goes away and I splash in, water filling my shoes. Someone recently asked what I wear. La Sportiva Akyra trail runners that are not waterproof. Why? Because once the water flows in over the top, you’re carrying it around with you. These shoes just squeeze it out and eventually dry.

Ahead is a huge cairn, but the well-used, puddly herd trail is well to its side – and it gets harder and harder to keep moving ahead. This is primarily because the ground is a boggy mess, but also the wind has picked up, pounding at us, thankfully from behind for the moment.

The mountains emerge ahead, massive humpy bits seeming to grab the earth like paws of a massive beast. To our left is an obvious cleft that leads down to a glen, but the guide tells us to avoid dropping in this ‘horrible mess that will destroy your spirits.’

So we keep high, contouring the mountain, the wind smacking us from the side. We must be doing something right, because we come across another cairn.

Ahead, the view opens to hills. Ted suggests we walk to a grassy bit a few football fields ahead. The cairn points the way, but that does not mean there’s a trail, likely because everyone through here found their own way over bog and streams, some carved deeply in eroded peat.

The grassy bit is far enough, my hope of seeing Loch am Daimh and the bothy beyond (somewhere out in the clag) We snap photos standing in islands of deep red moss, then turn back.

And the wind is at a fever pitch.

Ted takes a bearing and we press into it, keeping high this time over the cliffs of peat and bogs of unknown depth hitting our cairn on the nose – just as the rain comes in like a firehouse.

I lead, walking like Yeti and whooping to stay positive. It’s cold and my hand is like a claw, though not sufficiently numb for me to stop and put on mitts.

We find a track now, realizing the large cairn actually served a purpose to send the hiker higher and out of the worst of the ‘horrible mess’ we’d ventured into on our way out.

Just as we find the 4×4 track again, a man passes us on his way to bag a ‘Graham,’ another set of mountains of a particular height. We happily press on, the heather-lined track steeper than we remember.

But on the way down the view opens to the loch and bright green fields below. It’s a decent hike, plunging us deeply into this section with all things Scottish Highlands – bog, wind, rain, steepness and views, as well as a chance to get up close and personal with a new Scottish word, drookit, to be absolutely drenched.

But it’s worth it when a hot shower awaits – and more than a few drams of whisky.