Goal

Traveling by one of Loch Ness sides and trying to get a glimpse of ‘Nessy’ was a dream goal. However, conquer the highest mountain in the Scottish Highlands, Ben Nevis also know as ‘The Ben’ was one of the real goals. The other one was to taste and drink a good amount of the finest Scottish Whisky from the regions around where we travelled.

Participants

During this trek the team members where:

• Lasse Ö
• Jon-Erik D
• Erik Ö
• Robert M

Tour

We started our trek in Inverness after one days of traveling by airplane and train. Pictures from the trek can be found in the image gallery by choosing photo album ‘The Ben’.

Inverness - Drumnadrochit
The first days trek was intended to be roughly 15 km but we ended walking around 25 km instead. The reason was that the town, we intended to stay in, was much smaller and did not contain any bed and breakfasts places at all. So we had to walk all the way to Drumnadrochit. Where we rested in a hotel, ate a good meal and I drank some of the finest American whisky there is - Jack Daniels. I got the comment from the serving lady - “You are in Scotland and order America Whisky.” - I agree that was quite fun and intended.

Drumnadrochit - Invermoriston
The route went on both sides of a ridge and we got some glimpses of the beautiful ‘Loch Ness’. During the day we meet some fellow travelers and got recommendations for a Bed and Breakfast place. The reasons for the recommendation was the breakfast and that they got a foot bath. This is really nice when hiking. We where very fortunate that the recommended place had room for four. Though we had to share a Queen sized bed - “Tough luck”. Using the wining concept from the evening before, we went to the hotel, the only resultant in town, to eat a drink some whisky. Scottish this time.

Invermoriston - Fort Augustus
It was a short trek around 10 km and we arrived a hole day before our planed arrival. Due to this early arrival we did what all tourists does took a boat trip on Loch Ness, visited local pubs for some food and beverage and did the town.

Fort Augustus - Fort William
Bus travel nothing noteworthy ever happens on a bus trip, usually, and this was no exception.

Fort William
We stayed in Fort William for two days and managed to do two rather important things, namely:

• Ben Nevis: The fifth day we hand terrific weather and it was finally time to conquer the highest mountain in Scotland. It is only 1344 meters above see level. But it is important to note that the we start 20 meters above sea level. It is still a climb of 1320 meters so we prepared well with sandwiches from Subways and a map bought at the tourist station. Then we started of towards “The Ben”.
• Ben Nevis distillery: During the six day was the mandatory visit to Ben Nevis distillery and of course we took the tour and learned all the secrets of the Whisky that they make. At least that is what we thought we would. In the evening we visited some local pubs for food and beverage. Since this was our last day in Fort William before we where going back to Sweden.