We were up and about at a reasonable time this morning as we needed to go to our scheduled breakfast time, then pop across to the shop to get some snacks for our walk. It was surprisingly overcast and cool given how hot it had been the previous afternoon, and there was fog covering the tops of all the surrounding hills. By 9:45ish our bags were all packed and we headed off around the Loch to start the Cobbler Trail. 

The trail started off with a steep ascent up the hills by Loch Long and then evened out to follow a beautiful little gully with ferns and wildflowers growing along the sides. About halfway along this part of the trail, the sun started to come out, burning off the fog and revealing our quite ambitious goal ahead! The trail was deceptively smooth walking for most of the middle section, but after about an hour and forty five minutes, we turned a corner and reached the steps up the mountain. It was exactly that, just a huge steep staircase all the way up the side of the peak. I was completely burnt out by the top, so we stopped for a sandwich and a snickers bar before continuing the walk to the summit, where there was a plateau with stunning views of the surrounding landscapes. In order to technically ‘summit’ the mountain, you had to crawl through a hole and then climb up a rock pinnacle with an incredibly steep drop right by it, so we chose to just take some photos instead. You could see all the way down the loch to the ocean though, which was very cool! 

Once we were ready to head back down, we found our way to the top of the staircase on the other side, which seemed fine at first but was significantly less cared-for. It was much steeper and rockier, and there were several points where we had to do some scrambling and climbing to get down. It certainly made us grateful for the online guidance we’d been following which told us to turn right at the fork down below! We definitely wouldn’t have wanted to come up that way. Eventually we made it down to the bottom of the peak, albeit quite thirsty and dusty! After a face-splashing stop by a little stream we began the trek back down again, via the same path we’d started on. 

By the time we reached town at about 3, we were definitely ready for a rest so stopped for a few pints of water and a shandy at the pub before heading inside for a shower. We also spent the afternoon writing our notice letter to our landlady, which annoyingly we had to post, which we hadn’t realised before! Luckily we found an online ‘email to post’ service and sent the letter that way after some discussion over the phone with our caseworker about particular aspects of the notice process.

For dinner we headed over to the hotel up the road, which definitely seemed like it was stuck sometime in the 70s or 80s – very retro décor, 80s hits over the speakers, just all around quite a bizarre vibe. Then it was back to our room to collapse into bed!