A historical wander to Ba Bridge

[nigheandonn]

Previously: Sunshine on Buachaille Etive Mor

Once again the night was almost more eventful than the day - sometime before 4.30am I woke up in a stiflingly hot dorm and decided to go out for a breath of air, but having done that and gone to the toilet I found that my keycard had demagnetised itself, which they're always doing, and I couldn't get back into the dorm. So I went over to the main building to try to find someone to fix it, only to find that you couldn't get in there without a working card - and this time the front door of the bunkhouse building had latched properly behind me, which it hardly ever did, so I couldn't get back in there either!

Fortunately it was a beautiful night - warm enough to be comfortable and cool enough to be far more pleasant than indoors, and light enough that the mountain shapes were showing all around - and the midges seemed to be asleep! But I was exhausted from the trip so far, and it was just a frustrating state of affairs.

Eventually I went round shaking all the doors in the hope that someone would think I was a burglar and come out to send me away, and discovered that the early shift had left the back door off the latch, and after a bit of wandering around inside the hotel (because dialling the contact number from the phone on the reception desk didn't have any effect either!) someone was finally found to let me back to bed.

When I woke up for a second time everything had changed completely - grey skies and drizzle and cloud sitting halfway down the hills.

Kingshouse in the gloom

The forecast hadn't been great, but it hadn't been as bad as this for the morning, and I'd hoped to manage a quick trip over Beinn a' Chrulaiste before it really got miserable.

I was booked on an afternoon bus to Fort William, so I really needed a way of entertaining myself locally - I mean, if it had really poured there was always the option of going down and entertaining myself in the Green Welly shop, but although I didn't really fancy a pathless hill in the cloud, I decided that the weather was perfectly good enough for a wander along the WHW.

Rannoch Moor was my favourite part of the walk when I did it, but the real attraction this time was that I'd been reading quite a bit lately about both Telford and the Commission for Highland Roads and Bridges and the earlier military roads, and I wanted another look at this stretch, which hasn't been swallowed up by later roads to the same extent as many others (although it was the main road until 1933, when the modern road on the other side of Loch Tulla was built - there's more about all the roads here.)

Plus it gave me an excuse for avoiding the Kingshouse's all-or-nothing approach to breakfast and going up to the ski centre, so I wandered up there, and along the short cut onto the main track of the WHW

It's not that Rannoch Moor isn't gorgeous in the sunshine, but it's so wet anyway that looking at it in the wet doesn't really seem to matter - and the track is dry underfoot.

Damp and foggy moor

There are some quite solid remains of the original road built in - the contractors on Telford's road allowed for so many small bridges per length of road, and built them to a standard design. (Bigger bridges over the major rivers were built by specialists under separate contracts by specialists - meaning that for a while there might be a road without a bridge or a bridge without a road.)

Identikit bridge

Parked by the track was a much more modern way of dealing with the upkeep of the track than the gangs of men who would have originally built it!

Little yellow digger

There's quite a bit of up and down in the original route of the road - and the military road ran even higher across the hillside along this stretch, although I don't think there's much sign left of it on the ground. It makes sense, although it's not the way we'd do things now - a hundred years after this was built they still had a lot of trouble keeping the railway line from simply vanishing into the bog, and a road keeping to higher and drier ground was much better than a flat one down in the wet.

The day had dried up pretty well, too - plenty of cloud still floating around higher up, but much more view lower down, as I came over the hill and looked across to the hills in the south.

View downhill

I might end up walking the WHW north to south some day, because whenever I walk scraps of it that way it all looks completely different - and if I was doing it again I'd rather get the hills over first and then rest my tired legs! I'd already been thinking about it at Inversnaid - staying in the places I walked through in the middle of the day the first time round...

I found it interesting (both times) watching the track change underfoot, and wondering if it reflected how different stretches were built. I don't suppose any of it is really original, but this stretch did seem to show how it might have originally looked under the gravel top.

Old road

Ba Bridge was to be my turning point, and I knew I was getting closer when the valley started to open up to my right - some lovely burns running over red rocks.

Red burn

No one seems to be sure whether Ba Bridge itself was built by the army or by Telford's commission - the lines of the two roads coincide here, and at some point along the way it's lost its parapets, which might have given a clue. It's a bit buried in among trees, but quite a substantial structure.

Ba bridge

The long descent to the bridge meant I now had quite a way to go up - although I was at least going the right way now, and not passing crowds heading north - it made the path feel quieter, although I'm sure it wasn't.

The way back

As I came down towards Glen Coe again the sun was even coming out - it looked like it might turn out to be quite a nice afternoon, but the cloud was still sitting stubbornly on the hills, and I wasn't sorry I'd stayed down low.

Descending to Glen Coe

I had one last bit of walk to do, and with a case on wheels to transport from the hotel to the ski centre road end I had to decide whether I preferred the holes on the old road or the possible lunatics on the new one - but the state of the old road got worse and worse as I got closer to the hotel, and the new road looked relatively quiet, so in the end I decided to risk the cars - it wasn't too bad, with long stretches where I could walk on the edge of the road, and then get right onto the verge when something did go past heading north.

The bus was so late into Fort William that I wasn't sure I would make it at all - I went running straight on to the train without stopping to do anything like buy a ticket, and then had to go up and down hunting apologetically for the conductor - but at least I had made it, and set off for Skye for a week of making music instead.