Their story, in their words…
Day 1: We arrived at Charlton station early in the morning to travel straight to Edinburgh which was around a 6-hour journey, and arrived in Edinburgh in early evening, where we checked into our hostel. Before we went to bed we explored the city, talked to locals and got something to eat at the nearby MacDonalds, we also sat down and confirmed our plan with the maps we brought and marked out so we were ready next morning . After our meal we went back to hostel to sleep before an early morning the next day.
Day 2: We got up early and headed to the coach station which was around a 10-minute walk for our coach that morning. We took another 6 hours to head up to Morvich passing through forests, locks and mountains on the way there. Once we arrived at our starting point where we checked our belongings and started the first walk. We walked the Afrik Kintail way but in reverse to the first day was the worst filled with steep climbs up the mountain reaching the highest point of elevation on the entire trail within only a couple hours of starting. We had our snacks around half way through our walk and we made it our goal to walk at least 15km that day. Just after 17km there was a youth hostel(Glen Afrik youth hostel) where we could restock supplies and have a rest before the next day, so we decided to walk the extra km to set up camp outside the hostel and have dinner where we met more experienced hikers from Cyprus and Spain, they warned us about the midges and gave us some spray to help unfortunately it didnt help as well as we thought and we still ended up getting bitten through all nights.
Day 3: We started day 3 by restocking water and snacks before packing up our tent and heading off on our 2nd walk of the trip. We aimed to make it to the next town over which would mean we needed to walk almost double what we had walked the day before as we were still in good condition and high spirits at the time. But after around 7km the will to push forward was low as our feet was hurting and the bags were so heavy, so we decided to stop and rest for an hour before carrying on, however we immediately got swarmed by midges so we had to leave early. Just before the town we found an ideal spot to set up camp so we stopped and made dinner for the night before turning in for the day. We walked over 15km this day
Day 4: We still had around half way left of the walk with 2 days left, so we decided to just walk as far as we could this day walking around 23km and making it just over 19km left. We got there pretty late in the afternoon so we just relaxed our feet after setting up camp, even though the elevation had flattened out it was still a tough walk. But what made it so much better was the landscape as we saw so many cool places and natural beauty. We decided to play a couple of games in the tent such as uno and cards to pass the time.
Day 5: Last day of walking. We had just over 15km left and moral was high, we started out with a nice breakfast before heading to Drumnadrochit. It was a tough walk but we made it, however we had bad news. We had just been send an email saying our return journey has been cancelled, we were stressing trying to find out what was happened but luckily we could move our journey to an earlier time, meaning we would have a few extra hours when we got back to Edinburgh which was no problem. For the last time we set up camp in a field and called it a night after exploring the town and having a well deserved burger.
Day 6: We woke up the next day and packed up getting ready for our coach. We travelled to Edinburgh in around a 6 hour coach journey where we explored Edinburgh for hours looking at charity shops and stores before we heading home back to Charing Cross and back to Charlton were we called it a day and headed home.
