Friday May 9th, Torridon to Gerry’s Hostel, Craig
The Challenge Register had been put out early. 38 participants were due to sign out from Torridon. Although Alan and I signed out before 9am, we certainly weren’t the first….or the last.
Off we jolly-well set off on our Challenge: it’s Alan’s first and my ninth – and I STILL feel like an inexperienced beginner. A good job really, because that’s exactly what I am.
The intended route for the day covered 14 miles with around 3300ft of ascent. A slight navigational error saw us extending the route just a teeny-weeny bit. Unfortunately that teeny-weeny bit was through terribly overgrown and boggy ground. Oh well.
Our route involved going back over part of yesterday’s route: Annat > Ben-Damph Forest and as far as The Lousy Pass Bealach na Lice. It was a bit of a tug but it had to be done. A trio of cheery (and smug!) Dutch Challengers had chosen a more direct, but almost certainly steeper, route to the top:
The weather up to this point was still quite good, dry and bright. Alan spotted a gecko which he managed to pick up…..I thought he’d found a GPS.
We enjoyed some cracking views – the rain hadn’t yet started:
Not all the views were of the landscape. For Alan:
Our destination that night was to be Gerry’s Hostel. Our route to Achnashellach / Craig seemed straightforward enough on the map. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be quite so easy – a path we should have taken was dismissed as only a path can be dismissed, we walked past it and straight into some seriously, horribly overgrown and boggy ground.
Not nice. Oh, and by now the rain had started. Ah well.
After a bit of a faff that involved walking through someone’s garden we got ourselves down to the road – at least it wasn’t boggy. Or overgrown. A long stretch of tarmac took us to Gerry’s – a place I was very happy to find.
Gerry’s Hostel
Now then. Gerry and his hostel have a bit of a reputation and so Viv, Alan and I were all a little apprehensive as we entered.
We needn’t have worried. Gerry is a fine man who’s been running his hostel since 1964 and he’s well used to dealing with outdoorsy-type people. Almost as soon as we arrived in the building we were given a guided tour of the building and shown how to operate the showers. He’s got TWO showers now.
During the evening we saw Gerry as he bustled around the place, making sure that everyone had everything they needed and doing his best to ensure even those who hadn’t booked were able to stay over.
Gerry seemed to me to be a genuinely caring type although I could perhaps imagine that his care and concern for his guests could be misunderstood and get on the t**s of some. I liked Gerry, he’s a decent bloke. I think his reputation is maybe due to the fact that he is caring and that probably annoys some people = Gerry getting a bit narked sometimes.
Our evening in the hostel was very pleasant. The place was almost fully occupied by Challengers apart from a couple of lads who were up to grab some Munro-type hilly things. The evening’s conversation was good.
Accommodation was in one dorm filled with bunkbeds. Not plush but perfectly adequate. There was some loud snoring during the night so there wasn’t a great deal of sleeping – even with the benefit of earplugs.
At the risk of massively invading your space here is a fairly lengthy account of my stay at Gerry's on my LEJOG - 18th June 2008:
ReplyDeleteI went off up the road and went to a cottage where an aged gent told me he thought Gerry was off playing golf and guessed he would be back about 6:00. I went back and the couple had gone. I waited and it started raining. At about 6:15 another car arrived. It was a young man come to do some Munroing who had telephone booked, so things looked a bit more hopeful. I sat under a tree in the rain until the young student decided to offer to let me sit in his car. He told me he was doing a PHD involving something to do with diamond cutting tools which I couldn’t really understand.
Gerry arrived just before 7:00. He would appear to have spent more time in the 19th rather than the golf course, and was suffering from hiccups. He is a large man in his sixties with a sort of military presence. He spoke in strange clipped sentences. He took us inside and made us divest ourselves of boots and wet clothes in a drying room consisting of a combination of a fan heater, two dehumidifiers, and an open window. There was also an old fashioned airing rack attached to the ceiling and accessed by a kick stool.
Gerry showed us round giving peculiar instructions about how to use things, then he asked us if we wanted a fire. Out of politeness, I suppose, and thinking we would be fairly soon in bed after making a meal we demurred. I went into the kitchen and started getting my meal together, then I saw Gerry arrive in the sitting room armed with fire lighting materials, and muttering something about doing his duty and salving his conscience. He lit an enormous fire with logs.
I came in and sat by the fire to eat my meal, but the student remained at the back of the room reading, and seemed uncommunicative. After a while another young walker arrived, and he was much more outgoing, and we started talking, and then the student came across and joined in, and in the end, because of the welcoming atmosphere created by the fire we sat up talking until about 11:00.
The drying room got left in operation all night and proved to be very efficient even drying out my boots completely.
From a very unpromising start this turned out to be a good stay for £13, and no night disturbances.
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Apart from turning up late, which is not good. I agree with you on all aspects.
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