The West Highland Way

We just completed walking/hiking the last half of the West Highland Way, a 95 mile route from Milgavie to Fort William, arriving in our guest house in Fort William at supper time after about 10 hours of walking that fourth and final day.  There are so many ways of talking about this adventure.  Which way to choose??

I could talk about it in terms of the weather.  In many ways, Scotland's weather is much like Maine's.  As the old saying goes...."If you don't like the weather now, wait five minutes."  And so we hiked sometimes in shirt sleeves and other times in winter hats and gloves.  We hiked in sunshine, showers, driving rain, wind, gale strength gusts of wind, and hail.

I could talk about it terms of the places we stayed and the food we ate.  We walked inn-to-inn - and each innkeeper sent us off with a full Scottish breakfast of porridge and generally eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, black pudding (don't ask what's in it), fruit, yogurt, and tea.

And so we left from Tighe Na Froache (loosely translated from the Gaelic as "Heather's home") owned by the friendliest inn keeper ever in Tyndrum.  There I actually had an alternative to the full Scottish breakfast, one of scones and delicious baked freshly caught brown trout.  Anyway, we walked 6.75 miles that day to Bridge of Orchy.  

Bridge of Orchy has a railroad station, post office, and one hotel (the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, not surprisingly!).  There we enjoyed one of the most delicious (bar none) fine food dining experiences ever - right in the middle of nowhere in Scotland!

 From there we hiked 12 miles over Rannoch Moor to Kingshouse, which consisted of only the KIngshouse Hotel, the oldest licensed inn in all of Scotland.  The pub that night was filled mostly with walkers - and enjoyed an awesome steak and ale pie - Yum!

Our next day continued our journey for 9 miles over the rest of Rannoch Moor to Kinlochleven, the first stop since Tyndrum with a grocery store and ATM!  We had fish (yet again, we're really enjoying out Omega 3's!) and made the acquaintance of 2 Scottish wolfhounds, dogs of the hotel owner and welcome in the pub.

Our last day was a very long 15 miles to Fort William, the end of the West Highland Way, to our final bed and breakfast.  How glad we were to take off those hiking boots and then make our way to a highly pretentious (comically so, we are such pretentious people, you know) restaurant for dinner.

I could also talk about our trip in terms of the terrain we walked and the vistas we were privileged to view.  The highlands are absolutely wonderful.  Our trail went high in the mountains, through farmers' fields with sheep and even a few highland cows, and through dense pine plantation forests.  We experienced one of the largest and most desolate moors in all of Scotland.  We saw streams and rivulets gushing down the mountains sides and the last of the heather blooming.  When the heather is at its peak, it must be gorgeous - entire hillsides all done up in purple.

But perhaps I should just recount a couple of the highlights for me of those four days and 42 miles:

1.  Scottish Highland Cows - Those are the big brown cows with horns and long hair in the faces.  They look like they are always having a bad hair day and give the impression that they are perpetually in a bad mood.  I read a section in one of the guidebooks to the West Highland Way entitled "Hazards and Safety Precautions."  A subsection was entitled "Cows" and talked about what to do if you encounter a herd of Highland Cows.  The advice was to go around the herd rather than through is and never separate a cow and her calf.  As we were walking through a field on the first day, we rounded a bend and there in the road was a small herd of highland cows.  It was not possible to go around it as there was fencing on both sides of the trail.  The herd seemed to move apart for us, except for a female cow with one of the larger racks of horns and her calf, who remained planted in the middle of the trail.  Throwing caution to the wind (what more could we do?), we rather loudly announced our presence and  walked right through the herd, carefully skirting the other while being careful that she knew our whereabouts.  And so we could list highland cows to our list of wild life, which consisted primarily of sheep, red deer, and a golden eagle flying overhead.

2.  Rainbows - When you have sun and showers and clouds skittering overhead, you often get rainbows.  We saw several, but the one coming into Kinlochleven was magnificent.  It was the most vibrant in color that I have ever seen, and it arched from the very ground itself into the clouds overhead - a memorable sight.

3.  Friends in Passing - We met several groups of walkers on the trail.  There were the 6 women from England and Canada, friends who get together annually for a hike.  One of them was a fan of John Bell   and was excited that we would be spending a week on Iona with John leading our program.  She was a choir member in her church in Canada and sang me bits and pieces of Jim Strathby's Mass for the Healing of the Earth, which her choir is doing shortly after her return.  There was the couple from outside of Washington, DC and the Scot they hiked with that day who helped us cross a stream that was not passable at the usual crossing point.  After we got across, we stayed and helped the next group (from the Netherlands) by forming a human chain of sorts.

4.  Rain, wind, and more rain and wind - Most days we had only showers, but the day we hiked our 9 miles we did so in predicted driving rain and gale force gusts of wind.  Much of the moor and the mountain passes were exposed, and so we felt the full brunt of the weather.  It was pretty amazing - and in a way quite exhilarating!

Both Joe and I really loved the highlands - with the mountains, the wind, the weather, the mists, the legends.  We come away with such marvelous memories as we begin the next phase of our journey here in Scotland.  In some ways it seems as if our walk on the West Highland Way was almost like we were on a pilgrimage, walking to Iona.  That is where we are headed tomorrow.  Tonight we are in Oban, and in the morning we will take a ferry to the Isle of Mull, a bus across Mull, and another ferry to Iona.  There we will be staying for a week in the Iona Community based at the centuries old Abbey Church, exploring the island and enjoying John Bell's program on the in between season between Pentecost Sunday and Advent.  I am told that we would be dreaming if we thought there would be a computer connection on Iona....