May 25th 1991 - June 2nd 1991

It had been a long time in the planning - we had decided to take our regular (pre-children) hiking a step further and try backpacking.

I hadn't seen much of Scotland, so the West Highland Way seemed a good choice - 95 miles, Milngavie (pronounced Mullguy) near Glasgow, to Fort William via Rannoch Moor.

We bought the gear - all-season sleeping bags, arctic condition tent etc etc (no kids = more buying power!) because after all, Scotland is always cold and wet!

The weekend before the trip we decided to do the Three Peaks of Yorkshire, as a practice run - camping in the grounds of a great walkers' pub! (I first did that walk as a 7 year old - 23.5 miles including three climbs, in a 12 hour timeframe - at the time I was the youngest to have done it - lol!)

Well, that weekend, I managed to trip and injure my knee (whilst hiking, not making my way back from the pub) - so when we were dropped off in Glasgow, to start the big walk I was already wearing a support bandage.

Having never really had to carry, so much as a small backpack - setting off with a 35lb rucksack and knowing we'd be walking for a week, relying on maps and dried food, felt like quite an adventure!

To be quite honest the first couple of days were the worst - then you kind of get used to the routine of being asleep by 8.30pm and awake and packing up at 6am. As for the dried food - I would like to say it was delicious - but you know, I just can't!

Truth be told we needed very little of it - whilst we were walking blind, with only a rough plan of where to stop, we had inadvertantly (and luckily) planned what turned out to be the longest, most exhausting, pub-crawl in history! - HAH!

As for the weather - it was beautiful..and hot (80sF - almost unheard of). I got the strangest suntan around the bandage - lol!

The route itself was stunning - from rolling hills to lakesides, to boggy Rannoch Moor and dramatic razor-sharp mountains - ending up in the foothills of Ben Nevis.

Our plan had been to climb Ben Nevis (the tallest mountain in Scotland) the day after finishing the walk - but the clouds had come in, over-night and a rescue helicopter was already up there searching for a lost hiker, no doubt, dressed in summer gear! So we decided to stroll into the little town of Fort William and stand on the bridge - the official end of the West Highland Way.

So I took Tim's picture - he looked so proud of the achievement and then, when I passed him the camera for a shot of me, he leaned over and whispered 'will you marry me?'.

After 6 years of living together it came as something of a shock, I must admit! Maybe I had had something to prove and lugging a tent and backpack through the wilds of Scotland was proof enough - lol.

...............anyway - a year later, on Tim's birthday, we got married...and the rest, as they say, is history!