Met my church friend Beryl at Victoria station and we got to The Mall around 11am. We were very lucky to get to the front row (well she got the front row and I was 2nd row). After viewing this very emotional event, I decided to join the queue to see the Queen lying in state. Beryl was not interested, as, like many, she had heard the headlines about it possibly being 5 miles long and 30 hours queuing time. Undeterred I crossed Lambeth Bridge(where we saw those very first people in the queue – who had been queuing since Monday night and had been featured on TV) and trekking 3 miles down river to the edge of London Bridge – where I joined the end of the queue! After about half an hour, the queue started to rapidly move and we eventually stopped around Waterloo Bridge. This was where we were finally handed wristbands (I think they must have run out earlier, which was quite concerning to those of us for a while, as there would be nothing to stop any criminal queue jumpers).

My Facebook Summary: For those that may want to know the queue took 7 hours, but am very glad to have done it. It was a very moving experience, there were remarkable things to see along the way and you got quite a few minutes for the actual walking past. To describe the queue experience: The 2 – 3 hours along the river is quite alright and moves surprisingly quickly, some people even had a beer & you chat to all your new queue friends so time goes surprisingly fast! once you cross Lambeth Bridge and hit Westminster Palace grounds, things do slow down, the 2.5 hours of shuffling along queue lanes was a bit tough going, but then you finally get to the airport security and the police there cheer you up! their bag scanner tried to eat my bag and they thought this was very funny. Once past there, you know you’re in the last hour and the end is in sight.

Tips are: check where the end is on the “Her Majesty The Queen’s Lying-in-State – Queue Tracker” YouTube page or Twitter link. Wednesday night I heard it was around the Tate Modern(that’s shorter than where I started, but a similar time length) and make sure to get a wrist band! A friend ended up joining the queue at 6:30am Thursday morning and got there at 11am. My niece queued on Thursday night just before 10pm, the queue by then was in Southwark Park (past the Tower of London) and queued for nearly 11hours, walking at 8am in the morning. A couple of hours after her, David Beckham spent 12 hours queuing(what a Super Star that man is) and later that day they ended up closing the queue for several hours due to reaching capacity, queue times increased to 24 hours, but are now down to about 11 hours.

The Knoydart Penisula is on the North-East coast of Scotland, not far from the Isle of Skye and is considered the last wilderness in Britain – nowhere else in the UK can you hike for 2 or 3 days and not see anyone else nor be disturbed by any roads or cars. There’s no mobile signal either, no phone boxes, nothing

Access to the Knoydart is from a small village called Inverie, which you can only get to by hiking 27 miles cross-country or by taking a 45min ferry from the port of Mallaig. So why go to this place? Well, the original reason was the same as most visitors there – to see what is claimed to be Britain’s most remote pub “The Old Forge“. Having visited “The Nutshell“, the smallest pub in Britain, in Bury-St-Edmonds and various other unusual pubs, Bronwyn thought I’d like to see this one too.

Getting to the Knoydart Penisula and Inverie Village

The most popular way to get to Inverie is to hike the aforementioned 27 mile track – which runs from Glenfinnan railway station to Inverie – taking 2 or 3 days to do it. Glenfinnan is accessed via the Fort William <-> Mallaig railway line and most people park in Fort William and take the train to Glenfinnan to start the hike…BUT we decided to do it the other way round, because…I had just run the Loch Ness Marathon the day before! Yes, well time was short and whilst many “normal” people might want to take it easy after running a marathon, that’s just not my style, pal. I worked out that in-theory by doing the hike “in reverse”, I could give my legs a day’s rest! Therefore, the proposed plan was to park at Mallaig, take the ferry from Mallaig to Inverie, have dinner at the pub, camp the night at the camp site, hike 6miles the first day to Sourlies Bothy, hike approx 9miles next day to In’Cha Bothy in the forest(or camp somewhere nearby) and get up bright n’early to cover 13miles the final day to Glenfinnan Railway Station, catching the 4:57pm train – back to Mallaig and the car.

So we drove from Loch Ness to Mallaig, parked in the Long Stay car park there and took the 2pm ferry. My legs were a bit tired after the marathon, but feeling better by the minute to be honest. It was a pleasant boat trip with a lot of very enthusiastic people – who even pointed out seeing a Gannet dive into the water to catch fish! most of these people were staying in the Wee Hooses(see below), although one guy had his bike and was camping.

Shortly after landing, we discovered Inverie is indeed a very small village – pretty much consisting of :

• A restaurant called The Look Out(which also has some lodging rooms collectively called “The Gathering”)
• A cafe that makes a good cup of tea
• The famous Old Forge pub
• “The Table”, which is located opposite the pub and was set up as an alternative somewhat bus-shelter-like-“pub” by locals who really dislike The Old Forge’s owner
• A bunkhouse(which was annoyingly closed)
• A few rather expensive “Wee Hooses”(small houses) to stay in.
• and a Post Office where we purchased some food/supplies. Must mention, despite no mobile signal the locals kindly offer free wifi in a room next to the Post Office, so you can book your return ferry trip if needed

We lugged our backpacks the full mile to the camping site from the ferry port, stopping at the Old Forge to take a selfie and bought some supplies at the Post Office. We then set up camp in our new 3 man Naturehike Cloud-Up 3 tent.

After cooking some lunch at the campsite wooden hut and reading the advert in the hut offering accommodation in a Wee Hoose for only £150 for a night if you change your mind about camping, around 4pm we met two girls who had hiked from Glenfinnan over 3 days – they said they’d had Sourlies Bothy to themselves and only seen 2 people on the whole trek – to be honest they both looked shattered and their waterproof trousers were ripped to bits from river crossings apparently. They told us it was one tough trek, but they “kind of enjoyed” the last day, in that it was a relief compared to the rest. We told them our plans and they were quite shocked when I told them I’d just done the marathon

The Disasters Had Already Begun

Now, to be honest, we had been hit 2 disasters already :

Disaster #1 was Bronwyn phoning the pub a few days before and being told the pub was closed – yep, the main original reason for going to this place was closed, hoorah! so this first evening instead we went to The Look Out restaurant instead, which does remarkably good food – best scallops and haggis ever had anyway. On another table we saw the girls we’d met earlier and later one of the waitresses enquired “oh are you the guy who ran the marathon?!”, news travels quick round this area.

Disaster #2 was the weather forecast – nice days on Tues and Wed for hiking, but heavy rain from Wed evening and all day Thursday. This majorly altered our plans! Neither of us felt like trekking 13miles with full backpacks in heavy rain – simple as that – the weight of the tent and 3 days of food also seemed quite excessive to me(note to self: must learn to pack lighter).

So…the new plan became that we’d leave our tent where it was(along with anything we didn’t need) hike to Sourlies Bothy, stay the night and hike back, simples!

Next morning, despite it being bright from 7am, we got up around 8:30am and sat with a tea & coffee admiring the spectacular morning view – the sun rising, the estuary, numerous birds wading in the water, the mountains as a back drop, the quietness, just wonderful.

Disaster #3 – We left at 1pm

We re-packed our backpacks with sleeping bags, sleeping mats, torches, food for 3 meals each, cooking equipment, warm clothes for the night, water etc. This seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for some unknown reason(probably due to faffing). Should say we were quite well prepared for this hike – I had a printed map of the route I’d grabbed off Google Maps, the offical Knoydart O.S. Map, notes copied from The Scottish Bothy Bible and we even had walking poles – on the board-walk out of the campsite I managed to delay us by 20minutes by losing the rubber end-cap of one of my poles, so that didn’t help. Anyways, Thus our adventure begun – at 1pm!

I still thought 1pm would be fine as various blogs I’d read AND The Scottish Bothy Bible claimed it was only a 10km or 6mile hike – that would take 4-5 hours – I guessed this would be more like 6 or 7 hours with backpacks, so we’d arrive just after dark around 7:30pm – no need to worry Bronwyn that they said it was a “technical route” either, as in my experience that usually just means you have to walk up a mountain path and clamber over a few rocks.

So we set off and all was well and good! We were a bit confused where the trail actually started so asked a local lady the way and she told us “follow that path, go past the barn, up the hill, take the right path and just keep going and…just keep going!”(she gave a foreboding and hearty laugh after this, I now realise she was probably amused we were attempting this after 1pm).

We followed the road and found the barn, which led to a steep, thickly wooded area bordered by some kind of waterfall. The steps up hill were quite hazardous due to being mossy and wet, but no problem really, as long as you took your time. After this we found the way to be generally a paved or marked/obvious path. Now, apart from losing the trail half a mile beyond the wood, by taking a wrong turn and ending up on a building site – where we were told by a friendly workman that his boss might yell at us to “get lost”, things were good. Unfortunately, it looks like they’re building a road up and over the Inverie Hill – probably as a shortcut for traffic, which could well be a huge shame.

A Private Bothy and a Dead Deer

Continuing on, we made good progress and got to a “private bothy”. It was all locked up and there were lots of signs saying “Private” adorning it. The big Kilchoan estate borders the trail and I assume they use this bothy for various guests/visitors. Suddenly a guy driving a quad bike drove past carrying a huge dead stag on the back. He hailed me with “Alright man!”, which was nice. A few minutes further down the path we passed two very well dressed gentlemen(whom one suspects had shot the aforementioned stag). These three were the only people we saw the rest of the day.

We carried on and the trail began to veer upwards and onto a mountain path. The path was rocky, very damp and often streams of water would be dripping towards us from up-mountain. It wasn’t particularly difficult hiking, just quite slow going and our walking poles proved a most helpful addition it has to be said on such terrain.

The Concern Begins

I’d noticed on the map we were meant to ascend to around 500metres and seemed to be going up remarkably slowly. What seemed like miles and hours later, in fact it was around 4pm I believe, we checked the map to see what progress we’d made and where we were. Bronwyn worked out where we were(as I can barely read an OS map) and have to say I was somewhat dismayed to find we were less than half way along the route! I kept that dismay to myself and we trudged on. The path got steeper and steeper.

I casually asked if Bronwyn had seen the ruins mentioned in the Bothy Bible, but there’d been no sign of them.

Towards the summit(Mam Meadall on the map), we came across several river crossings. Lumbering a full backpack made crossing them more “challenging” than usual, but you just needed to take your time balancing on necessary rocks. Then we met one that was far too wide to jump, very fast flowing and without any helpful boulders. Also it was so close to the sheer cliff edge, any mistake or mis-step and you would highly likely find yourself plummeting off-mountain, ultimately to be dashed on rocks 50 metres below. I don’t say this lightly and ended up having to remove my backpack, stand in the river, lean against the tide and help both backpacks + Bronwyn across. There was also a fine rotten wooden bridge that was also somewhat concerning, but fine once you crossed it. The path continued ascending.

We’d Better Hurry Up Before It Gets Dark!

Around 5:30pm I announced we must push on and up the pace somewhat, the reason being was to urgently get to the summit by sunset at 6:30pm! once there it would be a case of descending steeply downwards, crossing the wetlands for half a mile and then we’d be at the bothy, probably just as it got fully dark.

We got to the summit at 6:30pm exactly! just in time to see the sun go down. It was quite beautiful. We had a break for 10mins and then set off down the alleged “zig zag path”. We could see a valley area below us, with a loch in the distance(where the beach is according to the Bothy Bible) and a large river snaking its way North-East. The zig zags didn’t start for quite a while, but the darkness did. By 7pm we had to dig out the head-torch just to see the path – Bronwyn in front of me wearing it and I following as best I could without tripping over. As dusk grew darker, the path became furrowed and full of rocks, that made it really fun to navigate in 2nd-hand torch-light. Still, at least we were moving quicker than going up-mountain, but the thing was this track took ages! It went on for miles! it didn’t go straight down, like a regular mountain path, it took us left and right and around the mountain! As time ticked by and we moved along the path, you could see the meanders of the river below us disappearing into the darkness and I became quite concerned we wouldn’t have any actual reference points to where we were. At one point we wondered if we were on the right path and considered turning back, but that wasn’t really an option, as at least it was descending, albeit incredibly slowly.

The Ruins At Last

Eventually, we got to ground level in near-pitch-darkness, it was then we saw the ruins at last! You really don’t know the sheer relief of seeing these ruins, meaning we were on the right path! According to the fabled Bothy Bible book text and O.S. map, a bit further on we would find a bridge crossing the river, then “a half mile of wetlands and then a short walk to the bothy”. My elation at seeing the ruins abruptly stopped when abruptly the path ceased to exist or rather became over-run by overly long torso-height grass! Our only choice became to head roughly East, skirting the ruins as best we could. This all sounds very trivial, but visibility was net zero other than what Bronwyn’s head torch lit up.

The Bridge “At Last”

We then heard running water in the near distance and proceeded further ahead, discovering the bridge or “The bridge, at last!” as I cried – the Bothy book had described this as a wire bridge and I’d been asking Bronwyn where this was since the top of the mountain path. It’s clearly been upgraded since then and is quite a sturdy regular metal and wooden bridge, thank goodness, as crossing a precarious wire bridge in the dark would not have been fun. After crossing, once again the path disappeared into what looked like a line of trees, bushes and plants that would be very difficult to traverse safely in the dark. Consulting the map, we decided instead to venture along the path by the river. In theory, this would be a longer walk, but we just needed to follow it as far as the beach by the loch edge, follow that for a mile or so East and hey presto we’d be at the bothy. Essentially this route was taking the two sides of the triangle, rather than the hypotenuse of it.

We walked along the river for what seemed like miles! for ages we trekked along the path as the river meandered randomly, the path then disappeared once again and the river veered West which it certainly shouldn’t do according to the map. At this point I started to complain and be most concerned that this was way too far to have walked and we were clearly lost. Continuing on, even more strangely the terrain became more and more swamp-like. We had to cross deep pits of earth and reeds, which you often couldn’t help but fall into due to the lack of light. We’re talking pits up to a metre deep here and this was where my socks finally got properly socked! even my brilliant brand new waterproof Colombia hiking shoes could not take being fully submerged like this. Should be said I was somewhat afraid of falling into one of these pits and injuring myself, I wondered how I’d be carried out of there or would it be like Joe Simpson in “Touching the Void” where he had to haul himself miles back to base camp. It also struck me that this area may well be some kind of in-between-the-tide-land and as my fear exasperated that the tide may return, trapping us, so did my desire increase to leave as soon as possible. Couple that with the utter confusion as to where we were, I would say my concern that we were staying the night out here in the elements reached its peak at this point. There was also concern that Bronwyn would(perhaps sensibly) never go hiking with me ever again and her parents/relative would probably tell me off too, oh well.

Looks like we’ll be staying the night Al Fresco

So with that pinnacle of anxiety, I think it was at this point that I had to make a call and prepare Bronwyn for the distinct possibility that we would have to spend the night out in this desolate wilderness…not in a bothy…but in our sleeping bags on the cold, soaking ground. I wanted to formally address this issue now as insurance against mentioning it in 3 hours time when true tiredness and abject panic had set in. Other women would have been rather upset at this announcement, I don’t doubt their screaming at me would’ve echoed around the surrounding mounting, possibly alerting the rescue services and ironically saving us, but I think Bronwyn appreciated my honesty and accepted the situation better than most

The wonder of the GPS tracker

We stumbled onwards, managing to find the most grassy area we could and desperately consulted the map once again. We re-read what the Bothy book said and even checked my GPS tracker which displayed the zig-zag random route we had so far walked. Please note: my GPS tracker only showed the route we had walked, there was no downloaded map with placenames or even the shape of the area on it or anything sensible like that, no, none of that stuff normal hikers may have!

Bronwyn briefly mentioned turning back, which I knew was not an option, we had walked far too far in random directions to know where else to go, let alone to get back to the ruins.

We tried to compare the GPS track with the OS map, but to not much avail. Even better, walking a few minutes further North we came across a huge white rock face in front of us – when all logic and the map pointed to there only being open water! We routed East once again and found a shallow river in front of us. We had no choice but to cross it and luckily it wasn’t too deep, but we were all the more confused by this. The terrain now was mostly just flat mossy bogland. Bronwyn consulted the maps and GPS tracker yet again and came to the conclusion that we must have backtracked on ourselves when following the river and gone far enough East to hit the small rivers shown on the map.

It was here we decided that the best thing to do was simply to head East and eventually no matter where we were, according to the map, we’d reach the mountains. Credit to Bronwyn here as her map reading skills are way better than mine. At least on some higher ground it may be a bit drier, instead of the soaking bogland that this was and we could stay the night there, until daylight around 5am. I used my iPhone compass to head directly East, sticking to that direction as best possible, although several times I had to correct us, as we drifted off due to the mossy ground, bushes, grass and pools of water – some that were just too thick or deep water to traverse in a straight line.

To improve the level of fun, the head torch now began to fade. Fortunately, I’d started sparingly using our other hand-held torch and had prepared a USB charger pack in case of emergency. So, we were only without light from the head-torch for a few minutes.

I see people! Oh noooo!

Next we happened upon some long knee-high grass. Suddenly, Bronwyn said in an excited voice “Is that people?! I can see eyes reflecting!“, “Hello!” she hopefully cried, shining the head-torch into the far distance. “Hello! Can you help us?! We’re lost!“. I joined in “Hello there! are we far from the bothy?“. Silence. Sadly there was nobody out there, just some deer. This was very disappointing, a cruel glimmer of hope given, only to be snatched away.

By now I’d gotten to thinking “You know what, it wouldn’t be so bad. We would be alright as we had sleeping mats and most importantly of all it wasn’t too cold nor raining”. The only problem would be finding dry ground. I once vocally again informed the world of all this, but neither the deer nor Bronwyn seemed to mind.

Out of nowhere a miraculous path appeared

We proceed through the long grass and randomly happened upon a miraculous sight – out of nowhere, a path, a real well-trodden path appeared! like what we hadn’t seen for the last 2 hours!! Bronwyn checked the map once again. I got very excited by this and checking the compass I noticed it was leading roughly South-East, so this must be the path we’d been looking for originally! The very fact it was heading at least South seemed extremely good news to me. Understandably, Bronwyn was skeptical at first, something about it not being anywhere near any mountains, probably due to the number of wrong turns we’d previously made, but I persisted following this wonderful path. After about 5minutes, glancing left, it could be seen that we were indeed near enough to see the outlines of a large mountain lightly highlighted by the sky – our eyes must have adjusted well to the darkness. Then we came across a small path, which forked out left and lead up into the mountain. Bronwyn announced this must be the “side path that takes you on the scenic route to the bothy” as mentioned by the Bothy book. After passing it and deliberating a couple of times back and forth along it, we ended up climbing up the first few rocks and then, as seems to be the fashion in this area, noticed the path once again disappeared beyond some rocks! it was immediately decided that after being lost for 2 hours in the darkness, it would be insane to go off-path and try to navigate this alleged “scenic route” across a mountain in utter darkness. Going by what we had experienced from the Bothy book previously, it could doubtless turn into a 5mile cross-country trip for all we knew. We also concluded the Bothy book was wrong about absolutely everything!

The Beach

So another 20 or so minutes passed by as we felt our way along the main path. Bronwyn suddenly declared “This is the beach!”. The ground had indeed become quite beach-like with a crude mix of stones and sand. We spent another 10mins or so trying to work out where to go along this here beach, as it peculiarly wound in-land and then out-land. After hokey-cokeying a cove or two, we had had enough and instead tried simply following the cliffs that our torches dimly lit as best possible. I moaned a few more times about where was the Bothy?! but we had a feeling we couldn’t be too far now. One of my favourite bits of the journey was when I saw a white roof, amongst a plateau of rocks about 20ft above us! “That’s the bothy roof! it makes sense because bothies are usually up in the woods!” I exclaimed. We just needed to get up on the higher path and we’d be there! I got nearer and enthusiastically climbed upwards and shone the torch. The white roof revealed itself as nothing more than a white cliff-face, cruelly and I reckon purposely designed in a roof shape this was another most disappointing moment. So on we plodded.

2 Tents and a Bothy

Only 5 minutes after this event, with me(to be honest) looking ever more despondent at the floor, Bronwyn yelped “Look! is that a house? I saw lights!”. This time it was indeed a house! We’d made it! we near-galloped the final yards and entered through the door, after fumbling with its puzzling locking mechanism! I had noticed two tents pitched on the ground outside, but dismissed from my mind the possibility of the place being full up. It turned out to be a fair size bothy – there was ONE free single wooden platform bed, one single platform bed littered with camping stuff and a large platform bed area with someone sleeping on it. The bothy also had endless gas canisters, pots, pans and other camping implements sitting in disarray on a large table in one of the corners.

Chivalrously I donated the free bed to Bronwyn, as she was, for some reason, adamant about going to sleep ASAP. She asked me where I was going to sleep, I replied I’d sleep on the floor if it came to it, I had not trekked all this way and gotten my beloved hiking shoes/socks soaked to bits to sleep outside no matter what! Anyway, it turned out there was only one guy in the room and he’d spread his stuff all over the other spare bed – just as I would’ve done in his situation. Unfortunately, we had to wake him up and ask him if we could move his stuff. It turned out he was a rather nice chap called Alberto from Spain, which I wrongly guessed as France from his accent and which he wasn’t too happy with, but I really didn’t care at this particular moment. He was very kind and gave me a desperately needed cup of water for which I was most grateful. Bronwyn promptly un-rolled her sleeping bag & mat, went straight to bed and fell asleep.

I checked my phone and the time on the clock was 10:55pm!! Now in extreme situations like this, most people sensibly just want to rest or go to bed and sleep, but oddly I tend to “wake up”. Last time was either when I’d queued up from 6am for Wimbledon tennis or after running the Stockholm Marathon. Both times, everyone else wanted to go to bed, but I wanted a few beers and the same was true now!

A Beer with the Deer

I unzipped my backpack, grabbed the tin of Tennant’s beer I suddenly remembered I’d been carrying all this way, went outside and happily drank it for the next half an hour or so under the stars. Must admit realising I’d lugged a heavy can of beer so far was a major incentive to drink it. Shining my head torch around the area I saw several deer standing about 30 yards ahead of the tents. I assumed there must be a large forest in front of us and the deer were just hanging out eating some grass. I’d have liked to investigate further, but really didn’t fancy wandering over there and being attacked by a stag or two. I could also hear waterfalls behind the bothy, but no idea where or how to get to them,. There was no water tap by this bothy, so the waterfalls were where you’d get some fresh water, but the couple of times I tried to get to them I found dead-ends and didn’t fancy climbing over or under anything in these conditions.

Checking the GPS route app I discovered we’d covered about 10.5miles! so nearly 11 hours since we’d left and 10.5miles walked, with full-backpacks! I wondered that perhaps I really should’ve joined the army when I was younger as I always said. I went back in, had the last drop of water from my cup and went to bed.

The Next Morning

I slept remarkably well on that wooden slat bed in that bothy, I’d have taken it home if that were possible. After waking up, I got up and decided to go hunting for some water from the waterfalls. Upon stepping outside, I was greeted with a most beautiful view! There wasn’t a forest, but a large loch of water! the deer seen last night had just been standing on water’s edge, possibly having a drink. It was a wonderful tranquil peaceful scene. If not for the predicted heavy rain this evening, we would’ve loved to have stayed another night in the bothy.

One of the tents contained a couple whom I had brief chat with on the way back from the waterfall, as they were already packing up. I’d actually followed the husband up to the waterfall, but he clearly wasn’t a morning person and wanted to keep himself-to-himself, don’t blame really. His wife though welcomed a chance to say what they’d done. They’d hiked all the way from Glenfinnan the previous day, hiking from 7am – 7pm, which hugely impressed me. They were similarly impressed with my tale of the previous day, judging by the looks on their faces, I was indeed a monumental idiot Back at the bothy, Alberto was also nearly all-packed up, after consuming his cous-cous breakfast. We had very pleasant chat, he was doing an amazing month-long walk, starting at Fort William and now would be heading North veering off on a side-path, instead of West of back to Inverie.

Leaving At A More Sensible Time

Sad to leave such a picturesque scene, Bronwyn ensured we left at 11am. So what happened on the way back? Well, to cut a long story short – it took us nearly 3 hours to climb back up the steep zig-zag mountain path and 9 hours in total to get back! yep, we saved a whole hour by not getting lost, which still doesn’t make much sense, although we did spend an hour or so cooking lunch on the mountain which was cool and felt very explorer like, so maybe that’s where the time went. I lost a bet that we’d be back by nightfall, as we trudged the last 3 miles in rain.

Interestingly we spotted the couple from the tent up on the zig-zag path, a good hour ahead of us, but never caught them up or saw them again. Also about half-way up we ran into an old guy who’d apparently been in the other tent by the bothy, he was a seasoned hiker whose wife had kindly let him go off for a few days and he’d just been up to bag a far col. He helpfully answered another question we’d had by telling us the reason nobody was staying in the bothies was because of fear of getting COVID. So with this guy, the other tent couple and Alberto – meant we only saw 4 people the entire way back to Inverie!

Moo Surprise

Now, one of the biggest highlights and surprises of this entire trip was crossing the last bit of farmland before the Inverie border. Shortly after closing a large gate behind us, a gigantic hairy bull with gigantic horns in torch light front of us! This animal was seriously the biggest bovine I’ve ever seen! it was bigger than a water buffalo and just what you need to come across in the dark after hiking for 8 hours wearing a full backpack, meaning running away would be severely hampered if he decided to charge! He starred at us for a minute or so and luckily chose to ran off into the forest. That was quite a relief I can tell you, hiking all that way and being impaled by a cow 1.5miles frmo the end would really make this a disaster hike. From then onwards, we proceeded as gingerly and as quietly as possible along the road, trying not to disturb any more local wildlife. Despite this, we encountered yet another family of these giant beasts, only this time I spoke loudly at them and they too ran off, thank goodness. After that we found another gate and made it back safely past the hazardous waterfall area and back to the camp site.

So where did we actually go?

Back at home, having tracked the whole “journey” on GPS meant the area in the wetlands where we got lost could be traced quite easily. It turns out we didn’t actually go that far off the correct track. Simply put, we went a bit too far past where the river meandered, then circled back upon ourselves, miraculously crossing the swamp North-East-wards in the pitch dark back to the correct path. The large confusing rock in front of the loch that blocked our way turned out to be a very large and unusually placed boulder, something we couldn’t have possibly known or guessed would be there beforehand nor is it mentioned anywhere. Perhaps the most confusing and frustrating thing of all was that the total distance from the Inverie camp ground to Sourlies Bothy IS well over the 7 miles as proclaimed by the guide books, it’s way more like 10miles and those guides either find this funny OR don’t bother updating that information as everyone hikes from Sourlies to Inverie and it wouldn’t matter so much doing that.

Lessons learnt from the hike:

Leave earlier than 1pm
Pack lighter if possible.
Download the GPS map on the GPS tracker next time.
Always take an OS map if doing this kind of thing.
Be prepared to stay out the night.
Get to your destination no later than 30mins after sunset.

Important Notes:

The Bothy Bible book says it’s a 7.5mile 4-5 hour hike from Inverie to Sourlies – this is clearly incorrect. I measured it using GPS twice and it is 10miles in length.

It also took us 9 hours to return, stopping an hour for lunch.

Equipment Used on the hike

Have to say am well impressed and well pleased with the equipment we bought and used for the hike.

Here is a list of some of the best of it.

TheFitLife Walking Poles – proved to be excellent walking poles, one of the reviews says they were used by a guy on a Himalayan trek, so they have a good record.

Azarxis Hiking Gaiters – great gaiters, kept my socks dry as best possible, stopped the rain and prevented my legs getting cut/grazed by thorns too.

NatureHike Cloud-Up 3 Man Tent – an Excellent lightweight tent – perfect for TWO people + backpacks. Being “4 Season”, can confirm it withstood near-galeforce winds and pelting rain on our final night at the Inverie camping site. Quite how you’d fit 3 people in it, really do not know, but that’s the running joke with tents isn’t it. Kind of wish had paid the extra £45 for the 20D 4000mm more-waterproof lighter version, but no other regrets. Ours was 210T is 3000mm waterproof version (tent water-proofing is explained very well by this blog entry).

Other Links

David Preston’s Blog about hiking from Glenfinnan to Inverie

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Got to Paul’s around 7:20am. Drove via the A406 and Kew to the M1 and then turned off J13 then heading via A421 St Neott’s and A1, A47, A16 and A52 all the way to Skegness or Skeg-Vegas as Paul calls it, we arrived there dead on 11am.

We took in the full atmosphere of ‘Skeggy’ by walking to the beach, where I touched the ocean(as is tradition) and did a short wander around the place. Paul bought some very tasty doughnuts but there was no time to lose, so after 45mins we headed straight for Scunthorpe! Should say it was rumoured there’d be huge numbers heading to the beach this day and have to say, when we parked there weren’t many cars, yet when we returned the car park was nearly full…so prob had a lucky escape

Anyways we arrived at the British Steel Works Scunthorpe about 12:45pm, parked at Entrance B and immediately had to head for the start of the tour. The tour (basically) travelled around the steel works and we were stood outside in an open Brake Van, being pulled by a small steam train! this is a working railway, as well as a working steel works. We got to do a circuit of the steel works, I was surprised at just how big this place is. We saw working locomotives and red-hot molten iron laden torpedos being transported around. You could feel the heat from these torpedos as they went past and you also got terrific close-up views of the steel works cooling towers as well as other parts. The tour was conducted by Frodingham & Appleby Rail Protection Society and was essentially very very good.

Due to the Coronavirus, we had to wear masks and our temperature was taken before we were allowed on the tour. There wasn’t any commentary, but this was fine. The rail tour was an excellent 3 hour affair, we toured around for an hour or so and then stopped off for a complimentary a tea/coffee and biscuits! Paul checked off the tracks we covered and said he will be heading back in August to re-do a full day 7 hour tour of the place next time!

We headed for a quick look at Scunthrope town centre and our next plan was the head to Grimsby for allegedly the best fish & chips in Britain or the world(allegedly), BUT on our way, Paul mentioned we were quite near the Humber Bridge! This happens to be my favourite bridge, as when I was a kid it was the longest bridge in the world and is still up there now (oh Wikipedia says it’s 11th longest now, but it took til 1998 for it to be beaten) – I’ve seen it 2 or 3 times and driven across it twice. Paul replied that he wanted one day to walk across it, as there was a railway station right by the start of it. Anyways we ended up detouring there(it was only about 20mins away) – we turned off at the last junction before the toll and ended up in “Humber Bridge Park”, which is by the river. We had a wander and realised access to the bridge was quite a long way away, so Paul asked a nice girl and she told us to drive back to the pub, do a right then another right and park literally under the bridge, then you can just walk to it. She was most helpful!

So, we walked the whole 3km across and another 3km back! it was most spectacular walk with very nice views of the Humber river. Also was quite amusing as due to the lockdown, Paul has only been outside about twice in the past 3 months, so he found the walk most arduous and was barely able to move by the end

It was now time for dinner, so we drove to Grimsby to seek out a genuine Fish n’Chip shop. We settled upon “Harry Whyte’s Fish & Chips“, which we thought was in Grimsby, but may technicallly have been in Cleethorpes, well estate agents would call it the “Grimsby Border”. Upon entering the shop, there was a fine scene that went something like :

Paul “I would like Cod & chips please“. Chip shop lady in strong northern accent “We’re all out of Cod, have haddock instead, love“. Paul <looking around in panic> “I’ve never had haddock, what does it taste like?” Me, quite amazed that somebody hasn’t tried haddock before, “Well, it’s a bit like cod“. Lady “I tell you, once have haddock you won’t go back to cod” as she recites how this had happend to her. Paul “errrmm<long pause where I indicate it is safe to eat> alright then.”.

Anyways as well as the exellent service, it did indeed turn out to be some of the best fish n’chips have ever had, so the legend of Grimsby rings true. Thanks Grimsby and Cleethorpes! We took a quick drive around the centre of town area and saw a good many youths enjoying themselves on this first day of pub opening in 3 months.

It was now starting to get a touch dark, but undeterred we decided to drive the full 1.5 hours to Lincoln. As 9:30pm rolled round, we stopped for a quick tea a the Spar at Gradebrook Filling Station AKA the A180 West Services Immingham Humberside and the very friendly bloke gave us two cups of Seattle Coffee Company, which surprisingly was some of the best tea have tasted in a long while! so totally recommend it if you see any. Eventually we got to Lincoln town centre and after navigating into the town centre. We parked and walked to see the Castle and Cathedral. They were most impressive buildings with the cathedral possibly more impressive as it was opposite Wetherspoons. The castle would be nice to visit in day time, didn’t know it was the only place in the world currently where you can see the Magna Carter and the Charter of the Forest from 1215 and 1217! (must go back there) On our wander back to the car, as it was this apparent first night in 3 months that pubs were allowed to open, we did attempt to get a drink, but it was 11pm and the barman said “you cannot approach the bar”(due to the lockdown) and so we didn’t get a drink in the end.

Finally we headed back to London. Now I was expecting the trip to be about 2.5 hours, but at the pub my phone surprised me by saying it would be 3.5 hours instead! Hoorah a nice long drive back then, especially since it was past 11pm already! We had a single rest stop at Toddington on the M1 and powered back home in a leisurely manner.

We went via St.Neotts again then Milton Keynes, M1, A406 and through Neasdon and central London to Putney. I dropped off Paul and then drove back to Worcester Park. Got home with the time on the clock being 2:59am! Goood night

Links:

Our walk across the Humber Bridge on Strava

Appleby Frodingham Railway Preservation Society – http://www.afrps.co.uk/

Lincoln Castle

Lincoln Cathedral

Then I discovered a slight problem!

The tour was all well and great, BUT upon checking the map I noticed it was primarily a “rainforest tour” and wasn’t along the actual official Amazon river either! In fact it turns out Manaus isn’t actually on the “Amazon”, but sits on the Rio Negro river instead.

Now, my wife did not mind this one bit and am sure 99% of people that visit Manaus are booked on tours and don’t mind either, most people really want to see the rainforest and the animals, BUT I really mostly wanted to see the Amazon river! So what to do?…

Well…it happens that the Amazon and Rio Negro do join forces about a kilometre down-river to the West of Manaus.

This point is called “where the rivers meet” and all tours visit it, it’s particlarly interesting as there’s a clear line and colour change in the water between where the two rivers meet. Despite this being on the itinerary of our tour, I had no idea and could not find out whether they’d actually sail us into the Amazon OR just up to the rivers-meet bit and then head off back down the Rio Negro to our jungle camp. Our tour emails said it would largely be along the more southern Rio Juma river instead and it was hard to find further details.

Three Ideas

So, I looked into ways of guaranteeing seeing the Amazon! Two ideas were :

1. A legit “Amazon River Cruise” at a mere cost of around £1500!! Nope, bit too expensive, so that one was out!
2. Discovered that Manaus may sit on the Rio Negro, BUT only 2 kilometres or so West via road is a township area that sits on the real Amazon(yay) river. Upon using Google maps I found there was even a small restaurant on the water front and you could get a taxi/Uber to a crossroads, walk about 1km and you’d get there! Verdict: Upon landing in Manaus and asking several locals/our-hostel about this, they described that area/idea as “dangerous”, so nope that was out

The Infamous BR319 Road

Not to be deterred, I then fortunately stumbled upon a trucker’s tale about a fabled free ferry boat that links the infamous BR319 road between Manaus’s Port of Ceasa and Porto do Careiro Castanho – it said this ferry travels 10km south west via the Amazon river! The details were sketchy and there was no timetable of course, but maybe it could be found at the port.

Note: The BR319 road is an 800km road that starts in Manaus and ends in Porto Velho, it’s apparently famous for being the worst road in Brazil (see links below), cool eh.

Our Experience

So…the afternoon before our tour started we ended up getting an Uber taxi to the Port of Ceasa – it’s about 20minutes away from the central Manaus. We had no idea where or when the ferry departed or arrived or when it would run until or where to get tickets etc. It was a Sunday and mid-afternoon and there was a fear it would stop at 4pm, as I’ve known other ferries of this type often do.

Anyways, Port Ceasa is quite a ramshackle port, it’s in the industrial zone of Manaus and not some plush port terminal you might be used to Sydney, New York or Europe. There’s no English signs for anything, the road by the water isn’t paved and there is lots of rubbish strewn on the ground all over the place.

From the covered entrance area where the taxi dropped us, we wandered down a small hill towards the water’s edge and to what looked like a jetty area where boats were departing from. To our left we saw a big old rusty plain looking metal ferry boat that had docked and was loading cars/vans onto it. We assumed this must be the ferry, but there were no signs about nor instructions nor information about how to board it! In hindsight we should’ve just walked up to it and boarded, but hey! Anyways, the main port jetty terminal bit, which was basically just a large platform in the sea that you enter by walking up a large plank, had many smaller jet boats docking there. We saw numerous tourists(mostly fishing parties) boarding these jet boats and zooming off. I asked in very broken Portugese for some help and eventually a very nice guy wearing a tour-guide jacket with remarkably good English tried to get us a ride, he asked a few of the boat guys, but told us they were mostly full up and the last one was just about to leave, which it did, not taking us! he finally found one guy who would give us a ride on the Amazon and to a floating water market as a half-day tour, but he wanted US$120! This was a lot of money for an hour’s boat ride and so we declined. What was interesting is this boat guy didn’t even bother trying to bargain with us, he clearly had enough tourists earlier in the day not to worry about it.

I then pointed to the car ferry and the helpful tour-guide guy smiled, said “aha!” and lead us over to it. He spoke to one of the crew workers and said jump on-board, pay that crew member 20BRL and you’ll be fine! I’d been most concerned about getting back before dark and the guy checked and said yep it’ll be back later this afternoon, “at some time”.

Note: 20BRL = about £4 so can’t really complain.

It was after 3pm and traffic to the port was quite slow, this meant we had to wait about 45mins in the heat for the ferry to set sail. This did kick off a feeling of excitement in me + a bit of adrenaline as still had no real idea where this boat was going, BUT it was well worth it! once it got going, we had a most wonderful and enjoyable ride across to Porto do Careiro! the ferry is very basic, but you get a superb view of the rivers, including the spectacular and mysterious “where the rivers meet” bit, you also get to see all the other boats on the river from above and the general lush rainforest landscape of the area! the ferry was almost empty so we kind of had it ourselves too, which was most pleasant.

Once landed at Porto do Careiro, we got off, took a quick look around at the various market traders and their stalls, put our feet in the water to say we’d dipped in the Amazon(don’t recommend this, the water is not clean), then got back on board.

Getting back to Manaus was just a case of waiting for enough vehicles to load up, which happened quite quickly, as there was a long queue waiting. We prob could’ve waited until the next ferry, but we had no idea where we were, what else was about or if it was safe after dark(it prob was) etc. so decided to return to Manaus. The sun was going down and we were treated to a very nice sunset and picturesque ferry cruise back. There were a lot more people on board this time and we even got ice-creams. Returning to the hostel was just a case of wandering back up the hill to the car entrance and getting a taxi to central Manaus(we could’ve ordered an Uber and we did have to haggle down to a reasonable price, but I thought it best to give one of these taxi guys some business).

Things we learnt and to know in case you go :

• The ferry is free, you don’t need to pay 20BRL as we did, just walk over to it and get on! I don’t regret paying and honestly don’t see it as being ripped off, just call it tourist tax, it was part of the adventure into the unknown + the experience + maybe it helped out the ferry crew guy a bit.
• The ferry (allegedly)runs from 5am – 8pm between the two points each day, the BR319 road is a major connecting road and this ferry is a very important link across it.
• The ferry ride lasts 45mins in each direction.
• The ferry departs when it’s full or nearly full of cars/vans. You may have to wait a while for this to happen depending on the time of day and how busy the road is. Apparently morning is way busier than afternoon on the Manaus side. We were there about 3pm and it took at least 45mins to load up, that was mostly waiting for enough vehicles to turn up.
• There were way more cars at the Porto do Careiro side and it filled up in about 20mins on that side. Am guessing more traffic wants to head to Manaus than vice-versa.
• Due to this there was a lot more people on the return journey, some guy even sold ice-creams for 1BRL each, so worth having a look around.
• At Porto do Careiro there are lots of market stalls for fresh fruits, fish, vegetables(corn, melon), drinks and other things for sale. It really helps if you can speak some Portugese or least know a few numbers to bargain with.

The next day we started our official paid tour and what a fantastic 4 night tour it was(see links for more info). Ironically, first thing we were taken to Port Ceasa and put on a jet boat, taken to “where the rivers meet” and then across the Amazon to Porto do Careiro! so, just what we did but with less hassel, right? so…was it really worth?? well yes, am well glad and pleased we took the trouble of the car ferry, was my personal favourite highlight of 3 weeks in Brazil, seeing the Amazon River at long last! if you get a chance, do the same!

Overall, it’s a Fantastic and very enjoyable, slowish 45mins ride across the Rio Negro and then the Amazon! you get to really enjoy both rivers and the interesting landscape around you. Personally think it was nicer than the fast, exciting jet boat ride that we went on our tour.

Note: Typed this up because I couldn’t find it detailed anywhere else on the Internet, so hope it helps somebody.

Links :

Epic Drive BR-319 Travel – Trans-Americas Journey – This is where I found out about the Manaus car ferry!

The BR319: Brazil’s Worst Highway – Fantastic blog about traveling this infamous road.

Mention of the free car ferry on TripAdvisor – just not many details about it.

Stack Exchange post about the ferry – at the time I really hoped the info in these 2 links was still valid.

Brazilian government info on the ferry from 2012

Manaus Booking – Rio Juma Jungle Tours – the awesome 4 night Amazon rainforest tour we did.

Gallery:

The falls Brazil-side

The main town near the waterfalls on the Brazil side is Foz do Iguaçu. We stayed there for 4 nights. The first 2 nights at the “Iguassu Eco Hostel“, which is right near the airport and helicopter tour field + is walking distance to the waterfalls and the Bird Park(aka Parque das Aves which is well worth visiting too). We visited both the waterfalls and Bird Park in 1 day. The the only downside to the Eco Hostel is that it’s quite a long way from the main town and there’s not much going on there, it’s just a chilled out place to relax, but you can always get an Uber or bus into town for extra beers/food(it’s about 15mins away). Saying that, they do serve water, beer and decent buffet meals of beans, rice and meat for about £5, but there just aren’t any shops around.

The falls Argentina-side

To see the Argentine side waterfalls, just ask the hotel to hire you a taxi to take you there and pick you up at a desired time in the afternoon(say 5pm). The taxi driver will sort out passport checking at the border on way, it’s very easy. We booked this at the Eco Hostel place and it cost us about £25 each(it’s cheaper if you can find others to go with). Should say there’s an odd $2 tourist tax when you leave the Argentina side waterfalls and go back to Brazil(apparently it’s to do with the town and the National Park), so try to remember to carry some cash with you.

Our other 2 nights were in a “hotel/hostel” called Pousada El Shaddai which was a good place in the main town, with kitchens and a swimming pool, near the bus station and a 5min walk to a big supermarket and a load of restaurants(oddly, they were quite hard to find in this town). The morning before flying back to Rio, I visited the Itaipu Dam, the world’s 2nd largest hydroelectric dam from here by Uber and bus.

The town on the Argentine side is called Puerto Iguazu and by all accounts is just the same as Foz du Iguassu, just a bit smaller. You can do exactly the same thing there – visit their side, then hire a taxi or bus to the Brazil side. Alternatively you could stay on the Brazil side a night or 2 then taxi over the border and stay in Argentina for 2 nights(lots of people do this).

Visiting Paraguay

You can also visit Paraguay for a day-trip(or for longer) from Foz do Iguaçu, as it’s right on the border – you can get a bus or Uber from the main road or main bus station in Foz do Iguaçu to the Paraguay border bridge, it takes about 20mins. Warning: Do not go over the border in the bus or taxi though – get out, walk to the Brazil customs buildings and get an exit stamp from Brazil, then walk over the bridge and get an entry stamp into Paraguay at their customs building. On entry they may ask you some random questions, but do not worry, just be honest and say you’re visiting for the day or however long. Ciudad del Este is the name of the Paraguay border town and it has lots of cheap random stuff for sale there(electronics/ornaments/fake-trainers etc). They also have a huge posh Oxford Street type store called Monalisa Store and others. When leaving to go back to Brazil, do the same as when you entered – get an exit stamp from Paraguay customs, then walk over the bridge and get an entry stamp back into Brazil at their customs building. Then catch the bus or Uber back to Foz do Iguaçu centre. Note: Don’t trust any randoms at the border, one guy on the Paraguay side tried to stop us getting a Paraguay exit stamp, claiming he’d get it for us, BUT just ignore them and walk into the customs offices and get your stamps yourself, it’s much safer that way.

Other Tips When In Brazil

Should say my 2 tips for Brazil are – use Uber as it’s safe/cheap(our Brazil friends told us this + there’s even an Uber pick-up bay in Rio airport on the 2nd floor at Terminal 2) and get a THREE Sim card that has GoRoaming if you need free data or get a PAYG one with 5Gb on it for £15.

hope that helps, thanks,

Notes and Preparations

This blog details the crossing at the King Hussein Bridge (also known as the Allenby Bridge) from Jordan into Israel. There are other border points, but this is meant to be the easiest one, as long as you already have a Jordan entry stamp/visa*. All you really need is to be somewhat prepared and to have some patience. Please make sure to know details about your trip to Israel, as you will be asked – which hostel/hotel you’re staying in, what you will be doing there and how long you’ll be there. Also have a copy on your phone or printed-out of your return flights if possible + make sure to have some cash on you to pay for the bus crossing. There is a Bank of Jordan at the border, but having some cash to start with, saves any extra bother(there are several ATMs in central Amman). Due to the interview and times taken give yourself about 4 hours to cross this border.

* = you usually get a Jordan entry stamp/visa on arrival at the airport or wherever. If you do not have one, then use another crossing, as the King Hussein Bridge does not issue visas.

Important other note – The Israeli Entry Card

In case you don’t know, Israel do not (generally) stamp your passport anymore. This is due to all the problems you can encounter entering certain Islamic nations if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport. Instead, they give you a ticket/card/paper visa that stays in your passport through-out your Israel visit and which is removed when you leave the country.

Oh yes, also Beware the Jordan entry stamp!

Crossing this border is all well and good, but it’s very sensibe to plan to come back via this border or another Jordanian border – rather than flying out of Israel. The reason for this is you get a Jordan entry stamp in your passport when you enter Jordan and an exit stamp when you leave Jordan, BUT if you fly out of Israel you won’t get a Jordan exit stamp! To any keen-eyed border guard who can be bothered, it’ll be pretty obvious what you did here and he’ll rightly assume you visited Israel. Problem is, if you happen to visit Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan or Yemen on the same passport, they may well reject you at entry. My original tri itinerary was Holland, Beirut, Amman, then cross from Jordan into Israel, tour Israel and then fly out of Israel back to Europe, BUT after realising this and there being a slight chance I might visit one of those nations(oh the love of random travel), I had to re-schedule my trip to cross back into Jordan, visit Petra(was a great decision have to say), before flying home from Amman(Jordan). If you cannot be bothered with this hassle then just fly in/out of Israel and visit Jordan as a side-trip BUT AVOIDING the King Hussein / Allenby Bridge crossing – as the other foot crossing do give visas on arrival (Wadi Araba Crossing or Sheikh Hussein Bridge crossing).

ANYWAYS Crossing the border…

I stayed in the fine Farah Hotel in central Amman and totally recommend this place and their wonderful staff. They sorted out a taxi from the hotel to the King Hussein Bridge(about 25JOD), which took about an hour.

The taxi drops you off just outside the border crossing – it’s a dusty, untidy, wasteland sort of place. TBH it looks like you’ve been dropped in the middle of nowhere. There aren’t many helpful signs, so I kind of wandered into the border crossing area, carrying my full backpack. Now, do NOT go to the “Departures” sign where the bus is! Firstly you need to get your passport sorted out first. To do this, just go to the “Public Relations and Tourism” entrance, which is next to the Bank of Jordan outlet. Go to the “Departures” booth and fill in the small white passport form they give you. These guys don’t say much, but if you ask, they are most helpful. They will stamp the white form and give you the passport back. Then go to the Arrivals booth(opposite) and give them your passport. They will tell you to wait.

Leaving Jordan

After a short time, they’ll take you(with your passport) to the bus(outside by “Departures”) which takes you over the border. You have to pay for the journey across No Man’s Land. It cost me 8.5JOD with 1 piece of luggage(my large backpack).

There’s a lot of stuff on the net about times when to cross the border, but I crossed about 4:30pm on a Sunday and there were 4 of us on the bus!

Anyways, the bus drives off and then there is a passport inspection at the Jordan border, whereby they take the small white passport form out of your passport and keep it (as a record of you leaving Jordan). I assume this is where they give you the Jordan exit stamp too.

The bus then heads towards the Israeli border and there’s a stop as it’s checked for bombs, which is quite reassuring really. Once that’s over, you drive a bit further and finally arrive at Israeli passport control! This far it’s EASY! Next up though is the part famous amongst travelers!

Israel Passport Control – be honest and know your stuff, folks!

If you’re in a tour or group of some kind, you probably have a big advantage, as you’ll likely just be questioned a bit by the passport officers, but won’t get stopped for an interview.

The Israeli passport officers question you in the toughest manner I’ve known, it’s like a higher level version of the US passport officers. The fact I was on my own seemed to immediately arouse suspicion, but the key is to just to be honest and answer as best you can + try to keep up with quickfire questioning! Now, I knew where I was staying in Jerusalem, how long I was there for, that I was joining a church group for a 10 day tour of Israel, BUT I didn’t know the exact itinerary of every single day of the tour and so this was good enough for the lady to withhold my passport and tell me to go sit down and wait, along with all the other dodgy types sitting and waiting did make friends with a guy from the USA who’s mother was born in Syria(I think) and we had a fun discussion about Brexit and President Trump.

About 30 minutes later a guy holding my passport called my name and took me to the infamous interview. They take you to a private room, away from everything, which helps the whole intimidating atmosphere. To be fair, it was about the same intensity of questioning as by the previous officer, but he asked a lot more questions! He asked why had I been travelling alone, wanted to see my return flight ticket/details and even asked me why I was shaking! I said I didn’t feel nervous, although in hindsight I probably was, as it was so intense All in all it probably took about 15 minutes. He then sent me to sit again and said somebody would bring my passport back. My US friend had disappeared to his interview, so I sat around for another 20 minutes and then my passport was returned and I was free to go.

After this I had to show my passport once more, along with the prized Israel entry card(whatever you do, do not lose this) and then walked out to catch transport to Jerusalem! It had taken about 1.5hours to clear the famous Israeli passport control.

Onwards to Jerusalem!

Once outside, you can then get a shared taxi to Jerusalem(which was 50Shekels) or there were others to Jerico. It takes about 40minutes to get to Jerusalem and was quite a scenic trip through the hills as the sun set.

One Last Passport Check: Before you enter main zone of Jerusalem, because you are traveling from the West Bank, there’s another passport check as you enter, so prepare for that too

Crossing the border back from Israel to Jordan

This experience of crossing back into Jordan from Israel was a bit different for two reasons. First I did it from Tel Aviv in the afternoon and second, crossing the border was a lot quicker.

Tel Aviv to Amman in an afternoon

I took Bus 405 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which takes about 50mins, mine left at 3:20pm and arrived at 4:10pm. Then caught local Jerusalem Bus 1 to Sultan Saliman, which takes you to near the Golden Walls Hotel, just outside the city walls. It was the day before Passover, so areas of Jerusalem were very busy with Jews getting ready for everything being closed that weekend, it was most interesting to see.

To the right of the Golden Walls Hotel is an entrance to a shared taxis lot, here you can get a ride to the King Hussein / Allenby Bridge border. As it was late afternoon and inspite of some hard haggling, they charged me 120 shekels, there were only 2 of us going there and yes this was a rip-off, but I had no choice. Apparently it is a lot cheaper before 1pm.

Leaving Israel

Due to volume of freight traffic, we queued for about 30mins just to get past the Jordan border checkpoint, where they checked passports and whether we had any weapons. They also did a bomb scan. The taxi dropped me at the point I recognised as being where I’d arrived from Jordan. This time, you follow the line on the left to the Departures queue to have your bags scanned. After this you wander into a room and have to go to a separate desk to pay the Israel exit tax(they do take credit card). Make sure they give you an exit tax receipt.
Then you hit Israel passport control again! This time it’s to get an exit permit. Again, they ask you some questions, but it’s a lot less intense. I got asked “were you traveling alone?” and “What were you doing?”. I answered I was on a church tour, with that the passport guy looked very disappointed at the lack of dangerousness in that and handed me my passport. Maybe he was hoping for me to say I was wild partying in Tel Aviv or something Following this there was an exit permit booth to check I did have an exit permit and had paid the exit tax. After that you’re now ready to cross back to Jordan! This whole process took maybe about 20mins.

Re-entering Jordan

Next up, you wait for the bus that crosses No Man’s Land again to the Jordan passport control area – depending on the time of day, it can be long wait for the bus, was standing there with a few others for about 30mins. Again they check your passport at the checkpoint entering Jordan.

The bus turned up and cost 4JOD(bus was 2.5JOD and 1.5JOD for my backpack). It drives through No Man’s Land and up to the Jordan passport control area. This time go to the “Arrivals” booth (next to the Passport booth and opposite the Departures booth where you went for the Israel border cross) and give your passport in. Wait for your name to be called. They check that you have a Jordan entry visa/stamp – which you should have got when you originally entered Jordan, I got mine at Amman airport. If you don’t, you’ll likely be sent back to Israel, as you cannot get one here at the King Hussein / Allenby crossing.

Once that’s all sorted out, you can then wander outside the area and there are usually taxis waiting outside. I got there in the dark and was quite fortunate to share a taxi with nice lady who spoke good English to a suburb in Amman. She didn’t like/trust the driver, so she made him take me to yellow metered taxi once we got within Amman. This metered taxi guy was such a good guy and only charged me 5JOD into central Amman, I gave him 10 as a tip then just a short walk to the Farah Hotel! All in a day!

Quick Summary of the Trip and How the Stamps and Visas work + costs :

Land in Jordan at Amman airport – Get a Jordan entry visa/stamp in your passport (costs about £45).

Taxi from Amman to King Hussein Bridge(about £30)

Cross the King Hussein Bridge on the Jordan side by foot – they check you have a Jordan entry stamp and give you a small exit paper, but do not give you a Jordan exit stamp in your passport.

Enter the Israel side by bus(costs about £10), get interviewed and get an Israel entry card which sits in your passport during your visit to Israel.

Leave Israeli passport control, take shared shuttle bus to Jerusalem(about £12) and tour AMAZING, historical Israel.

Take taxi from Jerusalem to King Hussein Bridge (about £30 in my case but go earlier in the day and you only need to pay £12)

Cross back again at King Hussein Bridge – pay Israel exit tax(about £40), get tax receipt and an Israel exit permit. They take back your Israel entry card.

Re-enter Jordan by bus(costs about £5) where they check you have a Jordan entry stamp/visa.

Get taxi back to Amman(about £55). Visit Petra, Dead Sea, wherever(“beautiful Jordan”, as my taxi guide said).

Leave Jordan at Amman airport – where they give you a Jordan exit stamp.

Summary: you now have a Jordan entry / exit stamp in your passport and no evidence you went to Israel!

Helpful Links:

Crossing from Jordan to Israel via King Hussein Bridge (Allenby) Terminal

Tues 14th Feb 2017

The plan for the morning: up at 8am, breakfast, pack car, 9am head to Wimbledon, go for 10km run, back by 10:30am, pick up Paul and head to Lancaster! I was signed up for the Hampton Court half-marathon on Sunday, hence the need for a run. Unsurprisingly, getting ready took longer than hoped and I got to Wimbledon around 10:30am! Picked up Paul at 11am and drove 5 hours to Lancaster University, stopping off at a service station for a spot of Costa and a Greggs baguette. A very helpful and informative bear of a man checked us into the uni and we headed to our room, which was most clean and pleasant. I then worked out this was probably the only day I could do a much-needed run, so that was the next priority. The booking.com reviews said there was a gym and sauna in this place, so we headed for the sports centre. Being gymophobic, Paul did not want to go to the gym and after being informed it would actually cost £12 + VAT + council tax, neither did I. Paul was kind enough to go back to the room and wait, so I went for an exploratory 7 mile jog instead – headed towards Lancaster Town Centre, then back and around the University grounds. Other than finally making it to Lancaster city limits(a goal of mine for many years), the definite highlight was the curious mirage towards the end, of hundreds of athletic young student women yelling and jumping around for netball practice, which you don’t often see round where I live…

Our next plan to walk the 3 miles into Lancaster, was altered, thank goodness, to getting the bus instead. On the bus Paul noticed our tickets said “Return to Bowerman hotel” and despite Paul being quite keen to get off, we passed/ignored that place and stayed sat until the town centre.
We walked up to the castle, which had some nice night views and an interesting plaque about how it used to be a prison. Paul also got to see the railway station! After a bit of wandering, we ended up at the Brown Cow pub – which was a great place, with fine Guinness, except this was Valentine’s night – so there was Paul, myself and about 2 other people. Still, we saw the Champions League shock defeat of Barcelona 4-0 to Paris St-Germain(the four of us cheered each goal) and the barman even said we could get a takeaway and bring it back! I was quite happy to do this, but we ended up going to Wetherspoons and grabbing some ‘real’ food(aka buritos) instead, which you prob should do after a 7 mile run. We caught the bus back and set the alarm for 6:30am!

Wed 15th Feb 2017

So, up bright and early around 7:30am (Paul did get up earlier) – we dined on a fine breakfast at the uni guest refectory place – Paul got confused about this being actually free, but other than wanting to pay for it and being sternly told ‘no’ by the dinner lady, he enjoyed a plate of bacon, egg, sausage and some toast! I had cereal, fruit, yogurt, bacon, egg, sausages, hash brown, toast, beans, black pudding, melon, fruit juice, tea + water, pain au chocolates and anything else I could find/put-in-my-pockets. Until packing up, I’d assumed we were actually staying in student digs, but turned out we had actually stayed the conference centre accommodation.

After navigating the way out, we headed North. Google Maps told us “Scafell Pike” was allegedly only an hour or so away via Kendal so we headed there. Paul was well prepared for climbing Scafell Pike – possessing only a thick hoody and no gloves nor hat nor much else. I’d hiked up a hill in freezing Snowdonia the week before and despite telling him this and recommending to really buy at least a coat, hat and gloves, he casually said he would buy them today. We parked in Kendal town centre car park and after a quick coffee buy, headed to Trespass to buy some gloves – the girl in her 20’s delightfully informed us that it was highly dangerous to even consider going up Scafell today! as it was at least 3 arduous miles up there, that it ‘gets dark by 3pm’ and how she’d been up another peak on Sunday and it was covered in thick snow and ice and the mist is so thick up there you can barely see your hand in front of your face! also if you take the wrong path, it could lead to the alternative 9 miles long route and take 10hours! By the end I was waiting for her to mention wolves and the beast of Bodmin, such was the level of utter madness she explained it would be to attempt such a thing today…I kind of disagreed with her, but just muttered to Paul every now and again. Anyways, Paul declined her offering of £55 ski gloves to help the situation, but he did purchase a most fetching wooly hat! Annoyingly there wasn’t enough signal to send a stupid Facebook message to my church friend and Kendal-native Kelda, but driving out the town centre woke me up enough to realise we’d been going in totally the wrong direction! we should’ve been heading for Wasdale Head, not just “Scafell Pike”!! On Google Maps “Scafell Pike” is the ‘other’ side of the mountain, the wrong side of where we wanted – that’s the 9mile walk side! As in all the best situations, Google Maps went AWOL, but eventually came back, saying we were now a good 1.5hours away from Wasdale! Hoorah! Eventually we followed a random B-road route cross country via Coniston Water. The countryside had changed quite remarkably from Lancaster, the hills were alive. We drove miles through countless ever-narrowing country lanes, endless blind bends and hill tops, down 14% gradients and up super-steep inclines – many, with beautiful views, causing us to stop several times and take photos.

The Climb Begins

We finally got to Wasdale Head only 2 hours later than hoped, around 1:15pm! The lady in the Wasdale Head shop was more stoic with a “oh you’ll be alright, by the time you come down it’ll be dark but that’s not til 5pm, see how far you can get”. I agreed with this lady more than the one in Trespass There was also a cool, very simple, summit map on the wall outside – a lot easier to read than my Ordinance Survey map! After buying some essential Kendal Mint Cake, hurriedly packing my pack with necessaries and finally convincing Paul to borrow my spare ski jacket and ski gloves, we were ready. The bonus after observing the terrain and mist covered hills surrounding us, was that it was starting to dawn on Paul, that this hike, perhaps, did require more clothing than just a hoody! We finally started walking around 1:50pm. Despite my warnings, advice and encouragement, then followed approx 30mins of overly quick walking, followed by complaining, sweating and moaning about “why do people do this?” and exasperations of “do they actually do this for fun?” from Paul. I think we had walked half a mile max at this point. We turned a bend on the path, which led to a glorious view of the path winding upwards, it went up and up, into some ominous low-level mist clouds! I found this quite amusing, as Paul could now see and appreciate the gigantic size of this place! I fear he had assumed, like anybody that hasn’t done this kind of thing before, that climbing this mountain was going to be a quick wander up some hill and that the map legend saying it was a 2.5hour hike was a joke – I mean, the path is only 3 miles long and and you can easily walk that in less than an hour, Right!

The Rain and Mr.Sensible

It started to rain as we entered the mist cloud level. Another 15mins or so and we met our first person coming down the path – a guy in his late 20’s, in just a light coat and no pack. He gave us some positive encouragement, “yeah the rain goes on, but higher up it stops and you’ll be fine once you’re past it”. We then met this older guy who was less up-beat. He’d injured his ankle walking an alternative path, before deciding to hobble back down for the past 45mins. He only told us he was injured after telling us how difficult and treacherous it was “up there”.

It has to be said the rocky path down looked very wet and very slippery, far more than when I walked down the path 10 years ago in December 2007. This did concern me somewhat, but I kept quiet.

Due to the constant rain, we both looked quite bedraggled, but oddly it wasn’t cold at all. This made it perfect timing for Mr.Sensible and his girlfriend to turn up! they were in their 20’s and he was a very nice guy, but very grown up! they’d evidentally gone up at a sensible time and were now descending at a sensible time, as that was sensible! He asked, nay demanded, “you’re not going up to the summit, are you?!” (almost implying – I’m not going to let you go up there), he frowned, sighed and added, “…you really need the right equipment to go up there!”. Paul’s first words were “yeah I know, I thought wearing jeans would be a laugh!”. This was highly funny, but Mr.Sensible did not smile, he was more shocked at the waterlogged look of the two of us and seemed very concerned we weren’t immediately turning right around and joining him on the way back down. He then told us there was “lots of snow, lots and lots of snow up there”, his girlfriend re-iterated “yeah lots and lots of snow, lots of it”. He added that it was zero visibility conditions up there too! His last effort, after looking stunned at my orange/grey trainers, was “You must have very wet, freezing feet!!”. At this point I did sympathise, as he must’ve reckoned we were totally clueless idiots(not a bad assessment really), so I tried to reassure him that my shoes were actually waterproof fell running shoes + I had bonefide ski gloves on me! he kind of gave up at this point and they headed off, shaking their heads, convinced we’d undoubtedly be needing helicopter rescue within a few hours. I didn’t mind, he was just trying to be sensible, which is fair enough, but sometimes you can’t help two clueless idiots like us lol. I was actually quite concerned my fell running shoes wouldn’t grip the slippery stones on the way down, but he who dares wins and all that. I should say, despite being unprepared clothing-wise, Paul had some very good Timberland walking boots, much better than my shoes to be honest.

The next and last people we saw on the path were a mother, father and their two 4 and 6 year old sons gingerly coming down the path. This inspired Paul to say “if a 2 year old can get up there, so can I!”.

Just after this, I suggested we rest a bit and eat something, for energy. At this point I managed to weigh Paul’s backpack, only to find it weighed a ton! no wonder he was sweating so much! he’d brought his tablet and 2kg phone charger with him, along with numerous other heavy objects! I transferred some of this stuff to my pack and we continued.

The Snow

We proceeded on and Paul moaned less, as he got used to the constant exercise and terrain. We came to the bit where you have to navigate the path via cairns(piles of stones) and we only got past this bit because I remembered it from last time. It was moderately challenging. Mr.Sensible was kind of correct about the visibility, the thick mist made it difficult to see the next cairn. We hit the snow line – where I noticed the snow on the rocks above us increased in prevalence. I started to fear Mr.Sensible might turn out to be even more correct, but tried to ignore this.

We went up and up until the path leveled out. We plodded on and on, until bizarrely the path started to go down hill, which didn’t seem right. Phone GPS’s were consulted and I tried to look at my OS map, but neither worked! after a few more yards we realised we had no idea where we were, so we posed for some photos and headed back. We then happened across the blinkin’ correct path up to the summit!! it was SO obvious, we’d walked right past it and had wasted 15mins with that wrong way! I asked if we could walk a bit of the way up and have a look, which we did, but it was after 4pm by now and had gotten very cold + visibility was very low. So, we took some photos and decided we’d turn back after all. This was a mutual decision – I could tell by his words, concern about not being able to get back before dark was on Paul’s mind and I too was more concerned than usual. Not so much for myself, as last time I’d had to hike down in the dark on my own, but more that I knew the slippery rock path part would be difficult to navigate, especially if you were new to this kind of thing and in the dark, serious injure was possible! I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen, if only to stop Mr.Sensible proclaiming how right he was all along. Having to turn back was a shame but not a big deal, I was most impressed that Paul seemed perfectly fine now and we’d had great fun thus far! Our clothes were even dry due to the altitude and atmosphere!

My fave highlight on the long way back was coming to the snow river crossing – quite high up, a narrow river splits the path at one point. You have to cross the river via some rocks, but due to the altitude and cold, the river was largely hidden under thin ice and thick snow! At this point, a perfect timing of tiredness and dimming light clogged Paul’s mind! the light meant the grey rocks of the path faded into the mountainside and the snow filled river now suddenly looked the most “path-like” thing around to follow and he mistook it for the path and started lunging up the river! It was very funny as he plunged through the snow, up hill, to a point where I had to shout “oi! where are you going? the path’s over there!”.

We made it past the cairns area, several times having to wait for the mist to clear enough to see the next one. Have to say making it past this area in the dark, with a torch, would’ve been crazy.

The Path Back

We then got to the horrid slippery, wet path bit. Paul sensibly stuck to the rock/stone/gravel path, his Timberlands were made for this, but my Columbia’s weren’t and I considered it highly dangerous to even try! Luckily, I remembered my tendency to be able to cover ground quickest by striding/running/balancing down the grassy sides of mountain paths rather than on the paths themselves, where the stones get in the way. It allows me to move quickly, but stop often to admire and enjoy the view, which was improving all the time as the sun was setting! This balancing technique does tax the knees, but in the shoes I was wearing, it was far safer than the wet rocks.

We spied 2 people ahead join from an alternative path, they were really speeding down the mountain, clearly a lot more keen to get back and were soon lost from sight.

About half-way down, it dawned on me that Paul was now somewhat worried about the darkness kicking in, as he was speeding up significantly.
I tried to tell him to take it easy, I said slow down, we have time, but he was unconvinced. Suddenly there was a loud crack and an yelp of “argh!”. This was the sound of Paul being welcomed into the real world of hill hiking, as he slipped and fell on the rocks! He landed on his backside and bruised his hand, but he was alright, thank goodness! found out later his Lynx deodorant was severely dented, having taken the brunt of the fall and probably saved his coccyx. He fell a few more times on the way down after this! It turned out things weren’t helped by him not wearing his glasses! he’d put them in the side of my backpack on the way up(they kept steaming up) and one of the arms had broken off, so he had no choice but to soldier on, squinting to see the way in the ever fading light.

Lost in the Pitch Darkness

I kept claiming that I’d walked down in darker conditions back in 2007, but must admit this was now worse! it was becoming properly dark and Paul was convinced we were still miles from civilisation and the lights we could see in the fields below were miles away. We had a small argument about which one of the 2 lights on the horizon was the pub and which was a hotel(he was right, I was wrong).

We made it to the one sign post on the trail, which meant we were nearing the end, but Paul had kept count of the number of gates and was once again unconvinced, he reckoned we had 4 more to go and he was right(again)! We descended to ground level and got to the final gate. From here I vaguely remembered you could walk straight out onto the road, near where the car was parked, but the only path I could see ran by the river, so assumed that must be the way. Mistake #1! Thanks to this we ended up walking at least another mile through random fields in what became total and utter pitch darkness! We realised we’d gone the wrong way, so we cut through some trees and headed towards one of the few lights around – it turned out to be a farm house and I could see my car just beyond it. The major problem was getting to the road involved scaling a wall, a stack of crates or a large field gate, which was too much effort at this point. To be honest I was worried Paul was in no condition even to attempt this and was none too keen myself. So, we tried to find a short-cut. After walking back and around the farm house, we found a latch gate, but it was tied shut with rope and I couldn’t figure out how to un-tie it. Paul has been in the USA the past 2 decades and thought the farmer might shoot us too, as we were trespassing, so we tried to find another legal way out to the road. Another 10mins of wandering in the dark and being blocked by stone walls, then walking over broken stone walls and into another field bordered by stone walls, I decided enough was enough and insisted we head for the farmhouse again. We got to the latch gate and this time I managed to untie it, in total silence, saying I’d take any responsibility if we got a “Hey! We don’t like your type round here!” shotgun style reception. Luckily we did not…and the car was just a short walk away.

The Pub and Pie

We drove to the pub. I remember 10 years earlier staggering into this pub, after having gotten lost in the mountains for the entire day that time and having a Guinness and pie, probably the most grateful for and best pie I’ve ever eaten. This time was similar, except I was only mildly tired, whereas Paul was the completely shattered one! haha! Also the pie this time had much less steak, as in I had 1 smidgen of steak in mine and that was the sum total of steak in both pies! It was still a darn nice pie though.
We drove back the 20mins in total darkness and checked in to our hotel – the most excellent “Strands Inn & Brewery” where we then had a few more pints of local made beer before retiring to bed!

Thu 16th Feb 2017

The final day of our trip. We both awoke feeling fine, Paul said despite the previous day’s exertion, his legs were ‘alright’. Had a wonderful breakfast in the pub and began the drive home. First stop was down the road at the Murt Camping Barn where I’d stayed 10 years previous, it didn’t look like it had changed that much. We then took a random detour, we kind of gave up bothering to look at any maps or judging which direction we were going in, but somehow ended up at this cafe/restaurant called The Byre – in Bootle, no, not in Merseyside, but in an area called Copeland. I spotted a local newspaper with Theresa May on it and apparently she had indeed just visited, in the run up to some election! Next up was Lake Windermere, as Paul had kept mentioning visiting this place when he was younger. He was very happy to see this place once again, but I became obsessed with finding “The Bobbin Mill” as it was on every sign we seemed to pass. It was a staggering sight once there, but was closed – oh Bobbins! Next stop was Low Sizergh Barn, a farm shop place where you could have a tea, eat some cake and watch cows being milked, live. I bought some sausages, had tea/cake and watched the cows being milked. Following these events we proceeded south, eventually stopping for food and a tour of Wolverhampton. The Royal London pub was a great place and a fine dinner was consumed. Final coffee stop was around 10pm at the same service station we stopped off on the way(I think), then home around 1am and that was that!

Google Map of where we went on Scafell Pike

[See image gallery at jamesreed.org]

Montreal Tips:
Take bus 747 from Montreal airport, it runs 24/7.
Travel card costs $8 and lasts 24hours after 1st usage on bus and metro + includes a ride on the 747 bus. $16 for 3 days usage.

Montpelier Highlights for me were:
1) visiting the Skinny Pancake shop for good/different food
2) pick up a free town street map from the Info stand a bit along from Subway, on the way to the state Capitol. this is highly useful.
3) tour the State Capitol building, very friendly and helpful guides there.
4) visit the Hubbard Park tower – about 20mins walk.
5) you can walk back down from Hubbard Park to the town via either path. the higher path is nicer, the lower path goes steeply down the ‘mountain’ and ends up.
6) visit the Uncommon market – reminds me of Bailey and Sage in Wimbledon village
Useful info:
The Greyhound Bus stop is on Main Street just by the Fire station, it’s on one side of the road only, The other side are for municipal buses.
The supermarket is the south end of of mainstreet.

Albany:
You can take Bus 29 and 6 from to Greyhound station.
Get hold of the B&B map.
Visit the Capitol, found very interesting, we don’t really have this kind of thing in the UK.