So Much Walking!!!

The main purpose of my and Dave's trip to Scotland was to walk the West Highland Way. This is a 96 mile route from just north of Glasgow to Fort William. We batted around various ideas, including a driving trip in the Scottish Highlands, before we settled on this. I read the entire West Highland Way website (as I was way more enthusiastic about this trip) and found a company, Highland Transfers, which would move our luggage from spot to spot. They also offered to book accommodations for us. As stops along the way are very limited, we took them up on that. We decided how long to take to walk it and how we wanted to divide it up (within the limitations of the available stops) and eventually settled on eight days of walking.

We had many emails back and forth with Ryan of Highland Transfers and he answered all our questions quickly and patiently. I'm so sad we never got to meet him because he was so great to work with. (PS. None of this post is sponsored but I just want to be really open about how we planned it. You can find the West Highland Way website here and the link to Highland Transfers here.) We opted to do our own transfers from Glasgow to the beginning of the route and then again at the end back to Glasgow. Most people walk the way from south to north, although we did meet a few people who were doing it north to south.

So after our day in Glasgow (which you can read about here), we woke up the next morning, walked to the train station, and took a 20 minute train ride to Milngavie (pronounced "Mill-guy") to drop off our luggage and begin our walk.

We took a few minutes to get oriented in Milngavie -- buying a paper map of the route (which we never needed), our souvenir passports (which we loved collecting stamps on), and some more caffeine to keep us going!

After a "this is what we're beginning" picture, we were off. The West Highland Way is self guided and very well signed.

This is the beginning, more civilized portion of the route...

Four miles down, 92 to go -- we've got this!

We're so incredibly happy to be in Scotland, and walking in this gorgeous landscape.

The first morning of walking felt very easy and do-able. We stopped at a roadside cafe for lunch. This was the most luxurious lunch of our whole trip.

We made it to our first stop. This day of walking felt pretty easy. Our hotel was behind the building on the right and we walked across the road to the pub on the left for lunch. The pub claimed to be the oldest in Scotland.

This was our second day of walking and my least favourite day. I found it the hardest as we had to climb Conic Hill. The ascent was exhausting but I found going down just as hard. Dave found different days harder which was good because we could keep each other going!

Contemplating if I really want to climb that hill in the background and the view from the top.

Some parts of the walk though were in forested areas which were beautiful.

 

The morning of Day 3 -- we've walked 28 miles and have 68 to go. This was one of the days which most people find the hardest, and while I was absolutely flagging towards the end, I kept expecting it to be harder than it was. Dave found this day harder though. I still claim the Conic Hill day (Day 2) was my hardest day.

This was the day we walked along Loch Lomond for the bulk of the day and the trail was not an easy paved path. There was a lot of scrambling up rocks, over tree roots (and sometimes under trees), and jumping rocks to get over streams. It was very wild compared to the hiking Dave and I are more used to. The views were incredible though.

Our lunch this day was a packed lunch from our lodging the night before, which we ate in the lunch area of a hotel on the water. Many of the stops on the West Highland Way are a single building (usually a hotel or guest house) which caters to walkers.

Every town, guest house, or hotel along the way, had an outdoor tap for drinking water and we could fill our water bottles for free. This area of Scotland is absolutely set up for walkers and so hospitable.

And this was halfway through Day 4, and halfway through our walk! I'm going to stop here and tell you about the rest of our trip tomorrow.

 

If you don't come back, I will say, this trip was more intense than Dave and I had anticipated -- it was much more of a hiking trip than we'd ever done before -- but it also far exceeded our expectations!

 

I've linked this post up with Joanne's Talking About It Tuesdays, found here.