What’s Next ? Hiking on along the Great Glen 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.

 
Ironically, the question in our minds that evening was not really what came next. We knew that much – tomorrow is onto the Great Glen Way. The larger question was what would come after that, with only four or five days remaining in the UK before we returned south to Southampton to once again board Queen Mary 2, this time bound west across the Atlantic toward New York.
 
Our original plan had been to travel south after the Great Glen Way and hike Hadrian’s Wall. But with our current levels of exhaustion, we had no idea whether we would even have enough energy to complete the Great Glen, let alone take on another national trail immediately afterward with little time for rest in between. What had seemed possible on paper a few weeks ago felt much more uncertain in practice at the moment.


Beyond that, the next stage of our lives loomed even larger. After Queen Mary 2 and our return to North America, we would make our way back to the Trans Canada Trail and begin the long northern journey toward the Arctic, a trek of roughly 3,300 to 3,500 kilometres that would likely carry us into September or October, depending on the weather. Compared to that, the question of what we would do with a few remaining days in the UK should perhaps have felt small. Yet, as always, the nearest uncertainty was the one that occupied our thoughts.

 
For now, we had no firm answer. Each of these things we would have to figure out in the coming days – which trail might fit the time frame, and energy levels we have left.  As we continued to sort through our thoughts about the West Highland Way and what the experience had given way to and asked of us, the fact remained that tomorrow we would once again shoulder our backpacks and continue on across Scotland on the Great Glen Way.
 
See you on the Trail!
Location: Fort William PH33, UK

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