Our Walk Along the West Highland Way

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”   Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisqu   Where one trail ends, another begins. Such is the nature of Fort William, Scotland, where the conclusion of the West Highland Way also marks the beginning of the Great Glen Way. We had barely finished one route before we find ourselves looking toward the next, knowing that tomorrow morning we were heading back out onto the trail.   From Fort William, the Great Glen Way would take us northeast, tracing canals and lochs through a landscape shaped as much by geology as by human engineering. The guidebook suggested that it was a route of longer stages but gentler gradients, which sounded promising after the climbs, descents, and weather of the West Highland Way. Of course, by this point, we had learned to treat guidebook descriptions with a certain amount of caution. We would know the accuracy of that assessment in good time.   Iro...

“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”   John Muir   Arriving at the West Highland Way   It is important to begin by saying that we did not come to the West Highland Way fresh. By the time we stepped onto the route in Milngavie, we had already been travelling for a month and a half. We had crossed Canada by train aboard VIA Rail’s Canadian , crossed the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Southampton aboard Queen Mary 2 , walked Wainwright’s Coast to Coast , and then made our way north along the Pennine Way before arriving in Scotland. In other words, the West Highland Way was not day one of a new adventure for us. It was closer to day thirty-one of a much larger journey already shaped by foul weather, fatigue, logistics, and the effort of pushing on.   This context matters because every trail is encountered through the body, mind and attitudes you bring to it. We arrived with stronger bodies, but also with very tired ones. We arrived ready...