he day started badly. We emerged from the tents and it immediately became apparent that the midges from the night before hadn’t left. Worse still, they had alerted all of their mates, as there were clouds of them. Millions of infuriating, biting little black dots which as soon as you brushed them away returned in greater numbers. We quickly abandoned the idea of breakfast and began to pack up but our problem was only just beginning. The midges seemed to gather on the surface of every piece of gear that lay on the ground so that every time we tried to pack an item they immediately de-camped to our faces. They were everywhere, on our skin, in our hair, in our ears. It was so bad that as soon as we had packed one piece of gear we had to run away for a brief respite before plunging back in again. It took an age to pack our rucksacks but as soon as we had finished we fled further along the path that soon gained height above the loch and there they vanished. It was like a toothache that had suddenly stopped. We found a wooden bench incongruously positioned outside a fisherman’s hut (below) and we slumped there for a while re-arranging our rucksacks and having a makeshift breakfast before embarking on the long trudge on the track through the forest. We welcomed the quiet monotony of the track after our unpleasant experience and eventually emerged from the forest on the edge of Clatteringshaws Loch before turning into the hills once more. The rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully through hilly terrain and we arrived in St.Johns Town of Dalry in heavy rain where we checked into a bed and breakfast for a welcome bath and the chance to dry some clothes. The evening was spent in a local hotel bar where we had a proper hot meal and a few beers as we counted the red spots on our faces, the only evidence of our rude awakening earlier in the day.