Onward to the West Highland Way

“The great affair is to move.”

Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

 

Toward Scotland, Between Hikes

 

After hiking fourteen days on Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and then sixteen days along the Pennine Way, we found ourselves with fifteen days left to explore the UK. We had not arrived with a completely fixed plan for this part of the journey, and so we began casting around for a trail, or perhaps a combination of trails, that could fit into the time we had remaining.

 

After almost a month of near-constant rain in England, the decision to shift regions began to feel increasingly appealing. According to the weather forecast, Scotland was due to be drier for the coming week, and that was enough to catch our attention. In the end, we decided to head north to walk the West Highland Way and Great Glen Way before returning to England to take on yet another small national trail – if we had time.

 

It was a plan that depended on steady progress, a little luck with the weather, and not much rest between routes. By that point in the trip, we were already hiking with both the strength and exhaustion of almost a month of long days, hundreds of kilometres, and the strain of moving from one trail to another. Still, the idea of continuing north felt right. We had come to the UK to walk, and there were still paths ahead of us.

 

Technical Challenges

 

Then, for the first time on any pilgrimage or long-distance hike, we encountered a different kind of failure - one that no amount of planning, fitness, or experience could have foreseen or prevented. The memory card in Sean’s primary camera failed, and with it went most of the photographs from the Pennine Way.

 

For us, this was not a small loss. Sean’s photographs are part of how we record these journeys, share them, and fund our journeys. They are part of the blog, part of the story, and part of the way we hold onto landscapes once we have moved through them. After two days in Manchester, sitting in an Ibis hotel at a small desk trying to recover the images and restore the card, we had to accept that most of those images were gone.

 

I took the opportunity to continue to repair his old backpack, still barely holding together after an incident on the C2C trail early on several weeks ago.  Yet even these efforts were limited as it was increasingly clear to me that, despite his love of the pack, its years of use and recent challenges were signalling its end. 

All of which was frustrating in a way that is difficult to explain unless you have carried a journey not only in your body, but also in your travel journals, your maps, and your hopes for what the story might become. After an evening at the pub, we came to terms with the situation.  We still had our memories of the Pennine Way, but the record we had expected to share later had largely disappeared.

 

With two new memory cards installed, and two trail days lost to us, it was time to shoulder our packs once more and return to the trail. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things simply do not go your way. You can spend the time you have left replaying what went wrong, or you can decide to move on. After two days, it was definitely time to move on.

 

Perhaps not everything on a journey is meant to be retrieved.

 

Train to Glasgow

 

We boarded a series of trains north toward Glasgow, unsure what awaited us next. Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a bookstore and picked up a trail guide for the West Highland Way.  Reading through the guide, what we found there surprised us: descriptions of tourism infrastructure, references to crowds, and a reputation as one of the busiest long-distance trails in the UK. On the flip side, it was also often described as ideal for beginners, well supported, and not especially challenging.

 

After 556 days trekking the Trans Canada Trail, and after long, quieter routes through France, Spain, and Portugal, the idea of stepping onto such a heavily trafficked path felt disorienting. We had grown used to solitude, to days full of forests, open landscapes and chances to watch birds.  Days defined by trail conditions, logistics and finding our own way forward.  According to the guidebook, the West Highland Way promised something very different.

 

We were heading toward Scotland with new memory cards, tired legs, a little lingering frustration, and no clear idea of what this next trail would ask of us. All we really knew was that it was time to begin hiking again.

 

See you on the Trail!