Day 1 - Milngavie to Easter Drumquhassle Farm

Lewis dropped us off at Gatwick early in the morning (for some reason domestic flights in England like you to be there 2 hours before. International flights 3 hours before, 4 if Heathrow is extremely busy) to catch our flight to Glasgow. We flew with Easy Jet or Squeezy Jet as some say. It's a cheap, cramped airline that doesn't believe in jetways, their only belief is lack of comfort for a basement bottom price. By the way, Lewis is my brother in law, try to keep up yeah?

We were picked up by Lucy G. Lucy G. was one of Carla's friends that was kind enough to pick us up from the airport and drop us off at the trailhead. She was also kind enough to drive us to an outdoor store to buy some fuel for my jetboil we ended up using. When she said outdoors store, I thought she would mean some dinky little shop that used to be someone's flat once upon a time. It was anything but as you can see below.


It truly was the Glasgow Outdoor Experience (note the wonky letter on the left side). The shop was very well kept on the inside and soon we were off to start our adventure!

Lucy G. parked illegally and asked if we needed anything else. She was very very kind and according to the UK, has the most soothing accent of all. The start of the trail was in a town just north of Glasgow called Milngavie (that's pronounced Mull-guy or Man-love, depending on who you ask). It was a quaint little town with a lovely little town center that had an obelisk to show us where our journey was to begin (I'm sorry. I keep saying things like we, our, us. "We" aren't the wizards. We are my friend Sean and I. I'm sure you'll see a picture of him later).

As we were going to start on the trail, a woman approached us (a detective no doubt) as she saw our monstrous packs and asked,

"Are you planning on hiking the West Highland Way?"

I really wish I could've come up with 4 or 5 wise ass remarks to make for this question because we got asked that quite a few times. The opportunity fled and we answered with a very enthusiastic,

"YES!"

She then started telling us about how great the weather was the week prior and that we were dumb to not have come the week prior. That seemed to be everyone's response when they asked us if we were hiking the WHW (West Highland Way). It's almost as if they were setting us up for complete disappointment on purpose and then were very proud of themselves for defeating Americans.

The woman had a very Scottish name, Rhiannan or something. Rhiannan took a liking to Sean. I am pretty sure she invited him over for a quick drink and fun before the hike. This is the three of us:


Note the wonkiness of the picture. The reason for this is that Rhiannan saw her neighbor walking down the street and asked her to take this magnificent photo. She was about 105.

Here we are getting ready to start:



Sorry, time for a short history lesson about the WHW. The WHW used to be a combination of things. I'm told that parts of it used to be along old railways, old military paths, etc. The trail is roughly 94 miles long. We were doing about half of that. If you want to know more about the WHW, click on this.

The first part of the hike was very uninteresting. We were close to a sizeable town so we saw some people here and there. The trail was asphalt when we were near Milngavie until we were on the outskirts at which point it turned to dirt. We found random trash along the way, which was kind of sad. Jaffa Cake wrappers and Haribo bags were common. We also found a bike at some point that we couldn't get to. As we traveled further from the town we noticed that there was a tree house in the middle of nowhere. We're not sure what it was used for. I think it was once a hideout for NEDs. NEDs, as we learned from Lucy G., are Non-Educated Delinquents. These are the pikeys of Scotland.



The scenery continued flat as we saw hills in the distance. The greenery was becoming more and more prevalent. We saw many cottages and structures that were boarded up. Presumably these were uninhabited for the winter.



We hiked 12 miles this day. The day was filled with some of the craziest weather I have ever seen. I once read that it is possible to experience all four seasons in a day in Scotland. One moment the sun was out, the next moment it was raining with intense winds. This was really tricky for packing purposes because our packs needed to be filled with stuff for every situation. That all translates to a heavy pack. Easy Jet limited us to 20 kilos. We were both dancing around that 20 kilo mark.

The wind was incredible. Although all the pictures seen above seem placid and lovely, here is what it was really like:



At the end of mile 12 we arrived at our destination, Easter Drumquhassle Farm. The guide books Sean had planned from all said that this place would be great because it would have showers, running water, washer/dryers, wigwams or a place to pitch your tent.

After Sean's persistant knocking a man finally came out. He looked like death.

"That'll be a fiver for bothaya."

I pulled out five pounds and handed it to him. He stepped back as if I was an alien trying to abduct him.

"I have the flu mate. I wouldn't get too close."
"Cheers," I said and we went to prepare our tent for the night.
"By the way. The showers ain't turned on. There's no washer/dryer. I don't turn 'em on 'til April 1st."

That last sentence will prove to be very important for the duration of our trip. We were pretty tired so we ate dinner early and retired long before the sun did. Here's what our accommodations looked like:


The trail went along the other side of the hedges.


The bathrooms were so tiny our knees hit the door. If it wasn't for the door hitting my arm, I would've pooped with the door open.


We were able to sit down and eat. It was a morale booster. Really it's the small things in life that make us happy. Sitting is one of them. Pooping with the door open is another...for some.

One thing we didn't read on the amenities list was a shack to shield you from the rain and wind (as shown above). This proved to be very useful because in the shack there were also tables, chairs and somewhere to plug electronics into to charge. This proved to be useful because Sean had this.

Fancy camera, wouldn't you say? It was a battery sucker unlike any other camera I had ever seen. After one day the camera had used two fresh batteries and was showing no mercy towards anything else we were prepared to throw at it. The beast had forced us to recharge the batteries which took about 5 hours each to charge for some reason.