The next morning, all of the midgets were gone. That is, they moved outside the tent. In our tent, they were dead and sticking to our camping mats. In Alex and Ellemieke�s tent, they were still alive. We took a look inside and the whole tent was black of midgets. Alex and Ellemieke were full of bites and we felt really sorry for them. Their mosquito net inside the tent had holes that were a bit big, so the midges just flew through.
I woke up with quite a nasty clag-bite, but I didn�t bother about it that much. I put a cold dressing on it to reduce the swelling (At that time, the bite had the size of a two-euro coin)
We drank our filtered water, which came out of the loch and because we bought a water-filter, we were able to drink it.
After breakfast, we started packing. A bit faster this time, we finished about an hour later. We were planning to walk about 18 kilometres this day, a fair amount, considering we were carrying around 20 kilo�s each (although we didn�t know that at the time).
After about an hour of walking, the next problem arrived. The clagbite had become bigger and started hurting. It was about the size of the palm of my hand, and my leg felt a bit numb. We decided to take a big break before we went further, so we stopped at a small pub that stood in the middle of nowhere, set up specially for West Highland Way walkers. We ate a terrific lunch and walked further. Every time we stopped, my leg with the clag bite hurt so much, I had to lean on somebody, because I was about to fall down.
Walking itself wasn�t really hurting; it was just the stopping that was really painful.
Around six, we found a small grass field where we could set up camp, because I couldn�t walk any further. We decided that I would walk as much as I could the next day, and if I couldn�t go any further, I would try to hitch-hike to a doctor. Going to the doctor was really important, because the bite had the size of two hands by this time.
That night, our dinner existed of the pieces of bread we had left and some edible plants we found. We made a soup of asparagus powder and those plants, like stinging nettle, milfoil, caraway and chicory. It tasted a bit bitter, but it was fair enough. |
