Day 35 Strathaven - East Kilbride

Well hello there bloggers!

Ed and I are happy to announce that we're in bonnie Scotland at last!

What an amazing sense of achievement it was to cross the Scottish border (5 days ago now).

I believe I wrote down our plan up until Lockerbie. We have stuck to this plan and from Lockerbie we walked to Moffat, where we then took the next day off as we'd been walking for 6 days and walking rather long distances too! From Moffat we walked to Crawford and the next day took us as far as Strathaven (pronounced Stravern) where we were met and picked up by Ed's brother Andy and Sister-in-law Gayle.

So, yesterday we took another rest day so that we could spend some quality time with Andy Gayle and their son Ben who is 1 in October. Gayle and I slaved away in the kitchen for hours cooking for Ben whilst the lads slobbed on the sofa watching the Olympics closing ceremony. Really enjoyed myself - it has been an absolute pleasure staying at A&G's.

Today Gayle dropped us back at Strathaven where we have now walked into East Kilbride town centre where we are currently sat in the library blogging away.

Tomorrow marks the end of B&Bs and back to the packs and good old camping and army rations. We head through Glasgow to Milngavie where we shall camp and then the next day sees us begin the West Highland Way which looks very exciting indeed! Fabulous scenery (weather permitting) and no more traffic!

Really, the last part of our walk can be viewed as three stages now:

1) The West Highland Way - Milngavie to Fort William (from where we shall hopefully blog next and this should take about a week to complete)

2)The Great Glen Way - Fort William to Inverness. This will also take about a week to complete but we shan't complete the whole trail as we need to come off the trail in order to reach Invergordon where we shall be staying with a friend of Ed's brother Ian.

3) A9 from Invergordon to John O'Groats - This will take about a week too - maybe a little bit longer. The final stretch - shame it's on roads but how super it will feel to reach the end!

Thank you to everyone who has donated! It really spurs us on when we see that we have the backing of so many people.

Ed and I are high in spirits and have no injuries (touch wood!) at present and can't wait to see what the rest of Scotland has to offer us. Take a look at a map of Britain and look at Scotland closely and you'll see that it goes on for quite a long distance - way beyond Glasgow and Edinburgh!

Carlie.