Sisters of Kintail - double quick!

The 5 Sisters of Kintail is one of the classic ridge routes in Scotland, it takes in 5 peaks, 3 of them Munros and offers magnificent views (apparently).

The weather was looking promising as Rick and I shuffled our cars around to save a long walk back along the road but the heavens opened just as we were about to set off - it didn't last too long - by the time we'd messed around and put our jackets on it had pretty much stopped.

(excuse the camera strap in that shot)

It was quite tough getting up to the ridge but was over fairly quickly so we could start enjoying the ridge. All 5 summits where shrouded in cloud but we got a few glimpses of views as we headed along - to be honest, we were going so fast we hardly had chance to look around!


A lot of the ridge isn't conducive to fast (or slow) running - quite rocky and windy, few bits of fairly deep snow to sink in but there a couple of nice long sections and the final section down from Beinn Buidhe and along the Allt a Chruinn was great.

I thought we'd done well, 3 Munros and 16 km in 3 hours 15 minutes that is until I checked Stephen Pyke's Blog for an update on his continuous Munro attempt - he'll be doing these three in a couple of weeks....along with another 9 Munros further along the Glen at the same time, still.... everybody's got to start somewhere.

--Matt

Riding the trails at Abriachan

Today was my turn for an outing 'sans bebe' and Rick was off work so we decided to hit the bike trails at Abriachan.

It was a gloomy misty day as we left Invergarry but by the time we approached the bike trails we were treated to blue skies and sunshine - perfect!

The forest is really well maintained and has some great bike trails, including some excellent play parks. We chose a loop linking up a green and a blue run to make a 10k-ish trail containing some tricky turns, a few lung-stretching uphill bursts, some scary but fun downhills and some whoop-inducing humps.


I did manage a fairly spectacular nose-dive, landing completely clear of my bike and almost hitting the cairn at the high point of the ride, as I struggled to get to grips with my SPD pedals, but it didn't cramp my confidence too much and I even had a play about on some see-saws at the end.


A grand trip out, I can heartily recommend Abriachan (they also have a brilliant adventure playground for littlies) and hopefully it won't be long before I can get back for another go.

Jen x

A Highland Hostel Holiday ***Guest Blog***

What a wonderful week spent in the highlands at the lovely Invergarry Lodge. Matt and Jen took great care of us as we sampled the highland way of life.

We paddled our way around Loch Oich in their newly acquired kayaks and an attempt was made to coax the native trout to join us for tea, unfortunately without success. The sun shone as we helped Jen with the “landscaping” and helped plant the official Invergarry Lodge mini orchard, we even mounted the tandem bike for a ride through the forest. Unexpectedly we received a lesson from baby Alby in basic giggling techniques and also a comprehensive demonstration on “How to chew the arms/ears/legs off children’s toys” from Dylan the dog.

We can’t wait until our next visit in July and will be practising our balancing skills so we can make it all the way across the slack line without looking like utter fools!


Thanks for having us,
Al and Sarah

Employee of the Month!

After a secret ballot (and a couple of recounts) it was decided that Alby was going to be Invergarry Lodge's very first Employee of the Month!



He can be seen here putting the finishing touches to the new gallery page on our website - look how happy he is to be receiving this award! Now, if only we could get him to clean up the office once in a while.....


--Matt

Invergarry Lodge is 95% brilliant...

....we're still working on the other 5% but I'm sure we'll get there soon. Customers who book through hostelworld can review us after they have stayed with us by logging into www.hostelworld.com, the average rating is then calculated from all our reviews.

You can also review us on www.hihostels.com if you book through the SYHA/Hostelling International - we have no rating on there yet as we haven't been on for very long so feel free to be the first to rate us!

As if that isn't enough we are also now on Twitter - you can follow our tweets here.

Bye for now!

--Matt

Great Glen Kayaking

Stunning weather up here at the moment so it was back out on Loch Oich again, this time with our own brand new - well, new to us anyway - kayaks.


We've got our friends Sarah and Al up and we all enjoyed cruising around the lovely still water in the spring sunshine. The kayaks seemed to work slightly better than the ones we used last time - these ones almost go straight! All was going well until I crashed into Jen and very nearly capsized her, I think she's just about forgiven me.

--Matt

10 Long Kilometres Under The Ben

I must have done something to deserve another great day out this week - this time it was biking down at the Nevis Range. It's been a while since I've done anything other than pootle around Glengarry forest on my mountain bike, but when Rick and Anna said they were off to do the red 10 Under The Ben trail, Matt offered to look after Alby so I jumped at the chance to join in. I'm normally in my comfort zone on a blue ride, but have ridden a bit of red before and Matt confidently informed me it was a nice 10k route which wasn't as intense as the Witch's Trail Red we rode last time we were here. With this in mind, we happily set off along the first section, which ambled through forest on bumpy singletrack. After about 45 minutes we'd covered a good distance, some long uphill forest roads, quite a lot of single track, some scary boardwalk and a few decent downhills. Then we met the top of the forest road leading back to the car park, and I was surprised to see the signs pointing us away from this. I figured it must take a trickier route back, but we continued along forest roads for a while in what seemed like the wrong direction. To cut a long story short, another hour and quite a few expletives later we still hadn't finished. The going was not too hard, although I do admit to a few squeals on some of the boardwalked sections, but it seemed to go on and on and on... I couldn't believe it was only 10 kilometres.

When we did finally ride back into the car park to meet Matt and Alby I was absolutely shattered. A trip to the cafe next to the Farm Shop to recuperate was definitely on the agenda, but on the way we stopped in at the bike shop so that Matt could treat me to a pair of biking gloves. A chat with the lovely Maggie at Nevis Cycles revealed that the 10 Under The Ben was not, in fact, 10k but 11.7 miles, or 18.8 kilometres - almost twice as far as I'd signed up for. But there was a happy ending, as Maggie gave us some excellent discounts on our new gear, plenty of useful information for our next rides, and best of all some tickets for complementary tea and cake in the cafe next door - just what the doctor ordered. In the end I realised it was a good job I'd burned all those calories as I tucked into a toasted cheese sandwich, a slice of amazing lemon cake and a well earned cup of tea. I can highly recommend the cafe, the service and food were just the ticket after a tiring day's riding, and can definitely recommend a trip to Nevis Cycles for anyone after a bargain or just some good advice on the local riding.

All in all it was a great day out, and a trail I can definitely recommend, just make sure you don't expect it to be half as long as it is :o)

Click on the video below if you fancy whetting your appetite...

Jen x

Happy Easter Hollandaise

Jenny's Invergarry Country Kitchen presents...

...An Easter Eggstravaganza...

...Recipe #11 A Scotch Goose Egg

Some eggsellent friends of ours gave us a goose egg recently, we couldn't resist making an extra large scotch egg...this egg was bound to be good, and we didn't have to shell out anything for it.

After staging a quick photo (have a gander at that here) Jen took control and got things moving along - she's an eggspert in the kitchen

We also did a normal egg for comparison, no propergander here...

....much bigger...


...and very delicious.

Happy Easter

--Matt

Loch Oich kayaking

According to the Great Glen Canoe Trail Loch Oich is "arguably the most scenic of the four lochs in the Great Glen". Our friends Rick and Anna managed to bag themselves a couple of free kayaks recently and as Rich had a day off work today we decided to accompany him for a paddle out on Loch Oich to experience the spectacular scenery for ourselves.


None of us has much experience on the water but it was a beautiful still sunny day, so perfect weather for an introductory outing. Matt and Rick were first out while I lagged behind at home with Alby making the obligatory picnic. When I did eventually arrive at the lochside with picnic, baby and dog in tow, I was met by a bemused Matt who assured me both kayaks were broken and he'd been going round in circles all morning. I wasn't sure I fancied that much but decided to have a go, so got myself into a buoyancy aid and off I went. I could see what he meant straight away, the boat had a definite tendency to spin, but by leaving a few seconds between paddles I could work out whether to swap sides or keep paddling the same side and this seemed to help me stay in a straight line.


Rick and I glided around for a while before the picnic beckoned and we tucked into our falafel wraps. We then had another go, had a race around the buoy (which I lost), went round in a few circles, and decided to call it a day so Matt could have another go before we retreated to the four-star luxury of Invergarry Lodge.

Jen x