By 2021, it’s been a while since my last Week(s) of Freedom, as I tend to call time off taken in between jobs. After completing several stretches of the West Highland Way the previous year, I wanted to sink my teeth into a bigger challenge, and chose the highly regarded Affric Kintail Way as my next trail.

On solid advice from WalkHighlands trip reports, I decided to skip the first section of boring forestry roads from Drumnadrochit and start my hike directly in Cannich, some 25km up the road.

With public transport transfers not exactly lining up, getting to the starting point wasn’t possible in a single day. I ended up spending the first night in Inverness, before travelling on by coach to the trailhead in Cannich.

Even on this tweaked itinerary, the first section was an excruciating slog along more forestry roads in the blistering heat that blessed me for the entire length of the trip. At one point I took the wrong turn too, so my total distance for the day somehow unexpectedly ballooned to 25km instead of the 18km it should have been.

The trail ran along the length of two stretched out lochs and from this point onwards, the beauty of the glen started to unfold around me in earnest.

The first loch I arrived at on the AFK, Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin, seemed to be a man-made dammed loch. Its surface reflected the unbelievable deep blue of the sky, with the surrounding native forests clinging to rocky cliffs that plummet straight down to the water.

This side of the glen is easily accessible by car and the cascades just downriver from the dam itself, called Dog Falls, are a popular tourist spot: an extremely busy car park heaving with day trippers. I took a blissful break here, soaked my tired feet in the sparkling fresh water and refuelled with a good late second lunch, taking lots of reference photos for future painting material.

Plodding on for another 4-5kms, I finally found a place to pitch by the trailside in the low afternoon sun. The midge attacked in brutal force and I dove into my tent at record speed to make dinner and conk out for the night.

I was absolutely spent, partly from the extreme heat and sun exposure, and partly from carrying all my gear and food to cross this through remote region unsupported in the coming days.

From Dog Falls onwards, there were no real roads, absolutely no infrastructure and not even any signal, so I knew that I was on my own to make it over to the other side, to Morvich. The challenge of this felt quite thrilling.

The next morning, after a midge-plagued camp teardown, I continued along the path, hobbling with an ankle injury, in the same blistering heat from the day before. This landscape looked very different from the usual Highland fare. This is because Glen Affric is famously one of the last bastions of the native forests that can now only be found in a very few special places in Scotland.

The typical Scottish landscapes are grassy or at most covered in low, tough shrubbery, and wide wide open so you can see for miles. Here instead, everything was covered with old growth and spindly but magnificent Scots pines. These woods are the some of the last true remnants of the old Caledonian Forest, much of which was lost over the ages to human activity. They were saved from total deforestation by the remoteness of the region, and apparently the shallowness of its waterways which made felling inconvenient as it was impossible to float logs down to Loch Ness in the pre-dam era.

I found this change of scenery absolutely mesmerising, and felt like I was walking through some fairy tale (though a very sweaty and muggy one). Even the undergrowth looked rich and unfamiliar, with new types of ferns and shrubs at every corner.

As I headed deeper into the glen and along the second Loch Affric, the landscape gradually opened up and turned into the more familiar vistas of bare mountain peaks, green glens and cold fresh streams. I was back into sheep grazing country, and finally, after many miles on rocky forestry roads, I was plodding along proper footpaths too.

After a long late lunch break in the shade of the then-covid-closed Alltbeithe Youth Hostel (where I probably picked up the tick I found the next day), I continued on as the trail started gaining elevation again.

I was pushing for Camban bothy, where I would spend the night. The force of the sun slowly abated as I shuffled up a mountain pass, until I finally caught the first glimpse the roof of this old structure. I was ecstatic!

Camban bothy is a simple structure with a nearby fresh stream coming down from the mountains. Two sleeping quarters with a hearth each, a communal cooking space and the mandatory shovel is all you will find there, but it’s perfectly adequate.

At first I enjoyed the silence & remoteness of the place by myself, until one other hiker turned up for the night. We chatted, watched the sun set, fled the midges heading inside and sharing a meal, then each of us took a room for ourselves for the night. The next morning we said our goodbyes and headed on in our opposite directions.

The last section was the part that I probably enjoyed the most, mentally, but found the hardest physically. By this point I was carrying a tick in my navel, a tendon in my right ankle felt rather bruised and more sore with every step, and I felt sticky and generally exhausted from the heat. Thankfully at least the temperatures dropped somewhat on this more mountainous section.

The trail turned into a proper mountain path now, my favourite kind, weaving around small peaks, gullies and waterfalls the entire last bit of the way until I reached the farmlands around Morvich.

I have fewer (good) photos of this section even though it was the best bit of the entire trail, but I’m hoping to head back to Morvich and hike back out to the bothy once more, so I will hopefully have another chance to document this cool corner of Scotland.

Reaching Morvich, I stayed in their excellent local campsite, taking my first shower of the trip, which was bliss. As they had a dry room and laundry facilities, I was also able to wash all my gear in the sink (gross!) and have clean clothes to put on the next day.

The following morning I plodded down to the bus stop to catch the Isle of Skye coach heading back towards Fort William. I picked up a well-deserved picnic and headed for the massive commercial campsite, with all of its creature comforts, for a feast, a big sleep and a rest day as until D would pick me up and whisk me away for a two night mini B&B stay in the area.

Originally we had planned on climbing Ben Nevis together the next day via the CMD Arête but sadly my ankle wasn’t in a safe condition to tackle ridges at this point. So I accompanied him on the first section of that hike, at which point he headed up towards the ridge and I tracked along the valley on the much less demanding trail up to the CIC hut, which I’d never visited before. This way, even on my dodgy ankle I managed to add another 14km to my mileage for the week.

This entire hike was a massive achievement for me, a great way to mark the occasion for escaping a toxic workplace and to celebrate new beginnings.