Day 3

On the third day, we were on the trail by 9:20. We started out going through sheep pasture and farm land along the banks of loch Oich. It was cool to be in with the sheep who didn't seem to mind us too much. We returned to the caledonian canal for a few miles, and here we experienced our first and only proper Scottish rain storm. Our lunch goal was Fort Augustus and we marched there in relative silence, rain dripping from our jackets. We made it to Ft. Augustus and had our one and only sit down lunch as we had nowhere to buy our usual ploughman's lunch in S. Laggan. Here, Jenn officially declared that she was 'busted.' And I was too. Busted became part of our GGW vernacular to basically describe that we were hurting, blistered, and generally tired of walking. Unfortunately, at this point, we still had eight miles to go that day.
Here we got our first views of Loch Ness which is an absolutely huge body of water. We ended up walking its entire length of 23 miles. At its deepest, it is over 700 feet down, plenty of room for the elusive waterhorse to hide.
We left the relative civilization of Ft. Augustus and headed back into the mountains. It was a steady climb for a little while, offering us fabulous views of the loch. It was beautiful!

We arrived at our end point for the day, Invermoriston, at 5:15, after 18 miles of hiking. I was really hurting, but a hot shower and drugs can do wonders. We took a few minutes to enjoy some whitewater on the river Moriston which was cool.
Oddly, when we got to the B&B, an ambulance was parked out front. I asked, of course, and in such a rural area, the ambulance is staffed by local people who leave it at their houses while they are on call for a week at a time. Cool.