Last Sunday I ventured out on a "dress rehearsal" for next Saturday/Sunday night's MoonWalk in Edinburgh. I had a fantastic time walking some 25 miles from Oban to Taynuilt and back along beautiful Glen Lonan.
It is an unprepossessing glen, much blighted by two ugly power lines but otherwise very peaceful, beautiful and mysterious.
At the top of the gentle slope down which cascades a burn (I would read this as a raised beach), stands a "dun", a rocky outcropping that our forebears must have used as a natural fortress -- here it is, with its beautiful old guardian tree: 
Also, there are several intriguing hillocks that look a lot like grass-govered cairns
and several places where there are large stones that look a lot like standing stones that have fallen over or been pushed by sheep or cattle, as here, at the edge of the road where I took the photo above
Walking hard, pushing myself and pausing as little as possible, was a special experience. I began to feel more and more at one with my environment, sensing changes in the air -- temperature, humidity -- and hearing things I would not normally notice. Those of you who know me know that I love cycling, but perhaps I am coming to a point where walking may become more important. It is an even more self-reliant form of travel, and I love the way it affords me glimpses of the minute things that line the road.My walk took just over nine hours. In this time I came past a very still pond,
saw some stunning stands of red fescue (festuca rubris) that reminded me of my childhood,
a shrub full of deep red roses (by the Gatehouse to Glencruitten House), 
three or six purple orchids on the verge and in a field nearby, 
several fields pink with campions
and purple with foxgloves;
other fields golden and white with buttercups, cow parsley and daisies
and fringed with bog irises. 
At the top of Loch Lonan, half a dozen of buzzards soared high overhead below the gathering clouds.
Just outside Taynuilt a fox disappeared into the shrubland; earlier, I had scared up a deer that bounded away, then waited and looked back at me before it ambled off into the undergrowth at a leisurely pace.Several fields held horses and ponies,
some of whom came up to nose my weird appearance: I was wearing a rustly plastic sky-blue rain poncho with cotton-wool clouds printed on it 
and the horses must have been intrigued by this apparition.I talked my way through two herds of highland cattle,
some cows with their calves, 
One of the calves ventured towards me to take a closer look, but was very shy and jumpy.
The herd was accompanied by a feisty-looking little bull that stood squarely in the middle of the road. No matter, certainly not to someone who spent some of her most formative years living next door to an Emmental smallholder with several huge Simmental cows in his barn -- and no-one had heard of de-horning at the time, so those animals were forces to be reckoned with. How do you deal with cows? You approach with respect, you quietly talk to the animals, you ask their permission to step across their territory. Not sure it would work with a Simmental bull, but then I've never seen one of them lording it over his harem and his babies, which maybe explains why they are so aggressive. I would be if I was kept in isolation all the time...All in all about a million "woolly maggots" (aka sheep) must dot the landscape to the left and the right of the winding, single-track road.
Oh, and I've not yet mentioned the very tall standing stone that guards the entrance to the glen, at Glenlonan, a small settlement of four, five houses, where the burn cascades gently down the slope before it begins its meandering way into Loch Nell, the lake of the swan.
The lichen-covered stone (granite?) stands at least 2.5 metres tall -- well over a man's height. It is almost square in diameter, about 40-60 cm each side. A few paces away are round boulders arranged in a small circle:
I probably heard more birds singing than ever before. And I was overtaken by a few motordyclists and, later, by six cyclists accompanied by their support car; and about half a dozen cars, vans, and sundry agricultural vehicles. I crossed the path of one other woman walker, and -- about a mile outside Taynuilt -- overtook a man and a boy carrying fishing rods and looking bedraggled and crestfallen in the pouring rain. I felt refreshed because it had been a hot day's walk until the sky darkened and the thunderheads 
opened their floodgates
The rain did fall during about half the walk, which meant that the feet and socks inside my lovely light-weight trainers were soaked. An interesting test, with interesting results, especially on my heels...I found a dry spot where I managed to put on my rain poncho and forget my apple
but the apple was still there when I returned about two hours later -- never has an apple tasted better than that one!Did I stop at Taynuilt and have a cup of coffee or a bite to eat? No. I took a photo of the War Memorial,
sheltered from the rain under the large tree beyond it, took a sip from my bottle, rearranged the contents in my rucksack, and turned back the way I had come.
But I promised to myself that, after the MoonWalk, I would train to climb Ben Cruachan, the pointy double peak on the horizon in the photo above.Towards the end of my walk, I was further rewarded by a metal gate bejewelled with raindrops that refracted the sunlight in gem colours,
a rainbow that arched across the entrance to Glen Lonan for the longest time,
a small handful of wild salmonberries,
and, finally, the extraordinary remnant of the rainbow, shot through with dark swathes of rain-clouds:
Despite the rain and some rather bad blisters on my heels, I still managed to smile -- well, just looking at myself made me laugh out loud. Whaddayathinkathis?
