It’s Raining Drymen

Yesterday was less eventful so I’ll discuss that and today briefly.

May 5th:

After a lovely breakfast at the B&B in Keswick, England, I went back up to my room to pack up before checkout and also check on my clothes that were wet and drying since the morning before when I washed them. Well they weren’t dry yet so I decided I’d just use the hairdryer and finish them off! Lesson - do not do that. After many minutes, the steam coming off my socks set off the smoke alarm in my room (though there was no smoke or anything on fire) and a piercing beeping commenced throughout the entire building! I actually didn’t know it was because of me at first, since I smelled no fire and it was just steam! Well, I was the culprit and I saw that the hosts were running around to each room to see where the fire was, so I alerted them to my mistake. They were so nice to me and just wanted to make sure nothing was on fire. They laughed and just said never to do that again. Phew! Luckily, I was about to leave anyway so I was very ready to drive away after that.

I drove easily up to the car rental spot in Edinburgh, dropped the car, and waited for Neil to pick me up. I miss that car already!

Neil drove me to the Premier Inn in a neighborhood called Bearsden just outside of Glasgow. It’s also a 20 minute walk to the start of the West Highland Way, which I’ll be doing tomorrow. I settled in and re-packed my suitcase and daypack, then watched My Best Friend’s Wedding on the cable TV. The room was actually quite big with a full bed. Even though I missed the quaint beauty of the Lake District and the cold industrialism of Glasgow was a shock, this bed felt luxurious! I walked into town after that to stake out the WHW start point and grabbed a pizza at a local spot.

May 6th:

This morning I woke up and ate a pretty meh breakfast of toast and cereal at the hotel before walking my suitcase the 20 mins to the train station where it will be picked up by a luggage service. I was going to take a bus there but none were running so early! So that added about a mile to my total for the day. I met a German woman doing the WHW and she accompanied me to the station even though she didn’t need to, very nice!

So day 1 was Milngavie to Drymen Camping; it was surprisingly easy. The only thing was the length of it, but besides that it was very flat, well maintained path and easy to find without a map. A ton of people were starting the same day as me so I just followed them. My ankle was fine but the thing that hurt most were the bottoms of my feet!

Today’s stats:

Overall accounting for the walk from the hotel: