We took it very easy today. We were both exhausted from the drive yesterday, and it turns out there's not much to do here in Inverness that either of us were particularly interested in. This stop was more about the highlands themselves instead of the town. We're not entirely sure this town isn't a weird Lovecraftian seagull cult anyway.

So of course that meant "taking it easy" had to include a 6 mile hike with 45 minutes of driving each way. I'd done some research beforehand about hikes around Inverness (and the famous Loch Ness) last year, and found a great website for hiking in the UK that had really detailed topographical maps and ascent profiles for all of their hikes. We browsed through that this morning and decided to try to summit Meall Fuar-mhonaidh, near Drumnadrochit.

Our drive there was pretty uneventful. We only had to drive down 4 miles of single lane road today, and at this point I was comfortable cruising on those up to 40 mph where the visibility was good. Susan made the observation that seeing another car on these roads feels like a more human interaction than just passing another vehicle on a dirt 2-way back home. I'm inclined to agree.

Pronounced something like "Meowl Foor-vanig," Meall Fuar-mhonaigh means "the cold round hill" in Gaelic. You can see from the picture that it's quite round, and we can assure you it is also quite cold. The round trip was quoted at 5.5 miles.

The first part of the hike was through grassy fields that were gated off every now and then for livestock. The landowners leave these gates unlocked for hikers, so we passed through without incident or encounter with any sheep.

The grasslands turned into a small, thinly-wooded forest with several streams running through it. This went on for about half a mile. The bugs were the worst here where they were sheltered from the wind, so we moved quickly into the scrublands above.

After climbing up 100 meters or so from the forest we scaled the fence by way of a ladder gate and moved our way up the ridgeline. The next mile of the trail was great - clear, dry, and with solid footing everywhere. Then we hit the bog.

I had always thought of bogs as more of a lowlands feature, so we weren't as alert to this as we should have been. We're used to wet weather and occasionally soggy trails in the Northwest, but not really boggy trails. Here's what I mean:

It rains so frequently up here that water has completely soaked the ground. On this relatively dry day in Inverness we were still getting sprinkled on for our whole hike. Even the driest soil here with thick vegetation squished under us and sprung back. There are occasional pools of water where the soil just can't absorb more.

We got roughly 3/4ths along the trail when Susan stepped in a particularly wet spot and soaked one of her socks. We have a lot more walking to do this trip, so blisters are not an option. We didn't bring spare socks in our bag so we found some rocks to sit on while we ate lunch and tried to dry out.

The wind started to pick up quite a bit while we were eating and the temperature dropped to go along with it. We had optimistically brought a plasticized picnic blanket with us so we used that as a windbreaker to keep warm.

Given the weather that was rolling in and the fact that we were already damp, we decided it was time to head back. We were still able to get some nice pictures while we were up there, but we wanted to get out of the wind as soon as possible.

Once we were off the ridgeline we were much less exposed to the wind and we could take our time. Susan started collecting wildflowers and weaving them into her braids. We found just about every color out there except a good bright red:

We were fairly tired after our cold and wet hike, so we spent the rest of the day resting and reviewing our plans for the rest of the trip. Not every day needs to be a full day.