Their story, in their words…
After weeks of planning, we finally started our journey to Scotland. After arriving in Fort William, we initially took our time to explore the town, and proceeded to walk down to the ruins of old Inverlochy castle followed by Caol beach, where we had fish & chips for dinner. For our first night we decided to wild camp, which didn’t work in our favour, leading to us pitching our tent up at 10pm in the night during heavy rainfall we did not expect.
The next day continued with the heaviest rain we’ve seen, so we had to adjust our plans, and unfortunately couldn’t visit the cowhill viewpoint we were eager to see, but did some more exploring around the town instead, visiting the West Highland museum. Once the rain settled, we headed to the Glen Nevis camping site which was a 50 minute walk from the town centre, and set up our tent, with only a drizzle of rain.
On the 25th July, we started our climb up Ben Nevis much later than we expected. The weather was much better than the previous days, with the sun out and no rain. We took a couple of breaks to take in the breathtaking views, especially at the halfway point, but once we were approaching the summit, we entered the clouds and couldn’t see much. It took 5 hours to climb up, and 3 to come back down. As we descended we had a chance to see our first sunset in Scotland without any trees or rain clouds obscuring the view.
The climb up Ben Nevis was very physically demanding, but we were determined and persevered in order to meet our goal of climbing the tallest mountain in the UK at 16/17. Once we reached the top we felt relieved we wouldn’t have to strain our legs to climb uphill any longer, and gained a sense of accomplishment.
Our journey in Scotland was challenging, especially with the constant weather changes, from being sunny one second, to rainy and windy the next. However we felt very welcomed by the close-knit community of Fort William, who always exchanged words as you walked by. Although, one thing we didn’t expect was having to pay to use the toilets almost everywhere in scotland.
We had an opportunity to grow as a person and now we have gained memories and skills to keep for a lifetime. Overall, we had an amazing experience, we won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
