Day 2

Today we're walking from Drymen to Rowardennan. No, you cannot pronounce that and even if you tried you're probably wrong. We have decided we do not speak the same English the Scottish do.

We got started this morning at 8:55am. It looks like it's gonna be a nice day. We've decided to take a break every hour to give our feet a rest. We start out in a pine forest. There are a lot of trees cut down. We're told there was a strong storm and many of them fell down. We heard a lot of cuckoo birds in the forest. I don't think I've ever heard those at home. The forest is really dense in places. Eric has committed to being a "forest ninja" in case there are bandits in the woods.

After we came out of the forest we walked through a working sheep farm. Lambs everywhere! In front of us loomed our first ascent - Conic Hill - the boundary point between highlands and lowlands. It's known as the great divide. They may call it "Conic Hill" but it appears to be a mountain to us! The 358 meters to the top of Conic Hill was a challenge. This was really the first place the trail was less than ideal. There were lots of rocks and it was wet. Walking poles would have been nice.

About 3/4 of the way up Conic Hill we met Fiona and Tressa. They will henceforth be known as British Romy and Michelle. They were a hoot! They were ill-prepared and not enjoying the climb. We passed them and after about 5 minutes we heard them calling after us - "help", "may day", etc. Haha!

The view from Conic Hill was phenomenal! It was so overwhelming you couldn't take it all in. This was our first really good look at Loch Lomond (britain's largest fresh body of water). It's huge!

After Conic Hill we had lunch and then started walking again. The trail deteriorated and we did a lot of tough up and down climbs. Turns out descent is harder than ascent. Cathy busted out her first "fuck damn shit" indicating this is much harder than we anticipated. That is officially our mantra. At some point along the way we met a random stranger. Cathy asked him what he thought so far. She was looking for an answer like "harder than I thought" but he answered "beautiful". I think she killed him with her eyes.

By the end of the day we made it to the hotel. Dustin officially has a blister on each small toe and Eric has a cold. Looking forward to a good night of sleep...after a couple pints (pronounced pin-ts) in the pub of course!