The final phase of THA began with the happy campers waking to the stark reality of a hike out from the lovely campsite up a watercourse seen here on the left leading up to a small loch, turn left head downhill a bit and the whale should be on your right.
Bouyed up on chocolate and chewing gum the happy campers set off. Progress was slow, perhaps if they had eaten a proper breakfast as in the ration packs and had a hot drink they might have been a tad more energetic.
But finally we were almost to the top and heading for home. Now bearing in mind yours truly was leading the happy campers the majority of whom could not find their backsides with both hands and a torch in the dark and later on the next day proved how difficult navigation in this sort of terrain was by failing to find the right path leading out of the campsite (neon lights this way home type path) yours truly led them to the small loch as required, but on close inspection found it was the small loch 250 metres to the south west rather than the south. This necessitated a everso slight detour of 500 metres in total which led to such a spectacular meltdown of senses of humour amongst the no longer happy campers who chucked their collective toys at the excessive distance now required to get back to cheese toasties, cake and endless coffee refills. No matter how many times they were told that they were only walking in total 3895 metres and climbing 275 the sulkfest continued.
Once the enormous walk was completed and frayed tempers abated by lots of calories, hot showers and tea two sugars yours truly decided the only way to end such an adventure was to use Moby as a new watersport, thus the younger always happy campers and me played silly buggers in the tropical (read brass monkey castrating) waters of Loch Nevis.
The night was spent tidying the camp, cleaning and packing kit, moving the Gypsy Rover out to a new mooring ready for a tow to Mallaig marina (I was left to tie the boat to its mooring, no pressure then if it was not there in the morning it was my fault), meeting theatre royalty (anyone not hear of Cameron Mackintosh? Cats etc) who popped over to have a chat with his neighbour, the esteemed Mr McClean, and by having an awards ceremony where those that had done well all week got prizes, for things like expert boat handling or best one liner.
Last day and a very early start so we could walk the 6 miles out to the vehicles, two volunteers left to stow the gear on the replacement boat, the rest moaned their way to the loch at the no where near half way back mark. Spirits were high and even though the walk was some 3x the length of yesterdays moan to death march the happy campers completed it a whole hour faster.
And so three hours exactly after starting our we picked up our vehicles waiting patiently on the shore of Loch Morar. Gerry started first time and behaved the whole way home.
We headed off to Mallaig to collect our kit and the two hard worked volunteers who had unloaded it
said farewells to our hosts for the week and headed south for 550 miles.
We stopped at Fort William to find this, the bottle boat Tom used to cross the Atlantic.
In all a great adventure, a big thank you to all who took part and made it such a laugh.
THA 2015 is already being planned.
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