3 Peaks - Day 5 - Ben Nevis

August 15, 2023

8am start again with fried egg and bacon rolls with the last of the homemade sourdough. Alex has coined them Baconaters. We made sandwiches and the customary soup and tea to take with us. It was raining first thing, but the forecast is good, so we carried on.

The route started at the footbridge over the river progressing to the stone path upwards. There are quite a few others on the path, and it’s slippy due to the drizzle.

We climb on up through the clouds and are greeted by swarms of midges! Memories of the Bothy Crawl when I was at school, come flooding back. Everyone else is suffering and standing around swatting and adding extra layers. We push on through. Einy is a good little engine and pulling all the way!

We make it past a nice lake filled with midges, eventually reaching the half-way point for a midge-free break. During the rest we realise we’re covered in dead midges, they’ve gotten everywhere!

We are passing people all the time who are not prepared for hiking mountains. A great collection of fashion trainers, jeans and t-shirts. The prize for the day has to go to a group of Just Eat delivery drivers who were all wearing their Just Eat jackets! Continuing the hard slog up through the mist we push through to 1000m where we take a break. Thankfully no more signs of midges.

It’s then just 350m to go and people are passing on the way down telling us it’s not far. Lots of false summits and it’s hard to tell in the mist. We finally make the summit and queue for a photo with the Scottish flag.

We descend 200m and have lunch on a sparse patch of grass.

Recharged we descend. There’s still lots of people coming up and plenty unprepared. It’s quite steep and hard work on the legs and Einy is pulling a lot which is exhausting while going down hill. The sun finally comes out, and we’ve gone from cloud cover to sun burn!

We keep going down. And down. Finally, we reach the pub and drink them out of lime and soda!

Einy is exhausted and starts to sleep as soon as we sit down at the pub.

Diana breaks out our Yoga stretching programme on mats outside the camper when we return - we get some funny looks from the other campers, but it does feel good.

Homemade beef casserole for dinner followed by a well-earned early night.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Ben Nevis: ✅
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Scafell Pike: ⏳
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Snowdon: ⏳

Distance Hiked: 15.5 km
Elevation gain: 1331 m