Serious practice hike: the West Highland Way

In June 2024 we hiked the West Highland Way (WHW) for our more serious practice hike. I have to admit that I found it pretty tough and we certainly learnt a few lessons – the hard way as my Dad would say.

In typical ‘us’ style, it was smooshed between a few things in our schedule and we (or at least I) didn’t have much time for training in the lead up, but we tend to walk most places so at least I had a respectable step count.

We’d chosen the WHW because a friend of ours had suggested it was pretty similar terrain to the Appalachian mountains because it’s where the same mountain range comes up out of the sea on the other side of the pond.

We traveled up by train from Norwich to Milngavie (pronounced Mul-guy we later discovered), which took a whole day. When we got there, we hiked a few miles into the trail to the first camp site. At one point, about 200 meters of the path was covered in thousands of tiny frogs about the size of a 5 pence piece. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was almost impossible not to step on them, but I’m really hoping we managed it! It was a hilly and long 4 miles to the campsite, and when we finally got there we ate the most expensive Mac and cheese I’ve ever had, but we were all ready to start properly the next day.

We hadn’t planned our mileage, but we had 7 days to complete the trail and a hotel booked for the end of it in Fort William, so we were keen to get some good miles under our belt early on to take pressure off the later days in the week. I can see how naive we were as I write this, but we were just learning as we went along. We ended up walking 17 miles the first day, to Balmaha. It was pretty tough going. After 12/13 miles we thought we’d just hike up Conic Hill and camp up there (in Scotland you can camp anywhere!) but it was enormous and there were no places to camp until we were down the other side. We managed to find a spot just before an area with camping restrictions, pitched the tent and headed into town to eat pizza, drink a beer and unfortunately watch Scotland get knocked out of the Euros. I got blisters that day; I won’t say this ruined the week but it really limited us from then on.

The next day we walked fairly slowly up the first half of Loch Lomond; partly because of my blisters and partly because it wasn’t hiking, it was practically bouldering. A little upside of the day was coming across the best honestly box yet. In Scotland they have little boxes (or sometimes small sheds) where you can buy things. People bake amazing cakes, tablet or sell other little things that you can leave cash for. This honesty box had bloody everything: cakes, plasters, iron-bru, little camping supplies and even boiled eggs. Finding boiled eggs anywhere, let alone a glorified shed, wouldn’t usually be something I would be chalking up as a win for the day, but when you need protein in the middle of nowhere, we were pretty happy about it. We did around 12 miles that day, but the last few really got to me. I felt broken as we finally found a beach on the shore of the loch to pitch our tent on. I could not go on any further. I sat on a rock and devoured a whole tube of Pringles. thankfully that fixed me up and I could contemplate continuing the next day.

Morning came around and it was great waking up by the loch. We had a dip (pretty frickin cold) and drank tea on the shore, then hiked up the rest of the length of the loch. We had booked a tent spot at a place just north of the loch that had its own pub. The thought of pub food (and the England football game for Roo) was driving us. It was tough going again though and as had happened the previous couple of days, the mileage we clocked on our Garmin versus the mileage the map said was pretty different. Everyday it was always 2 or 3 miles more than we thought and by the end of the week we had clocked 112 miles instead of the 96 that the WHW is billed as. Each day these extra few miles wore me down and on this third full day after another day of hobbling on blisters, these unexpected extra miles broke me. I balled, and just about managed to make it to the campsite but I was bloody done with the WHW. Our campsite was next to the river and we were in peak midgey season so as we pitched our tent at dusk, they were everywhere. They were even driving Roo mad, and he is one of the calmest men I have ever met. We ate in the pub, drank a beer and watched the game, but we were too tired and fed up to enjoy it properly.

We woke up the next morning to find midges stuck to our guy lines like iron filings in pyramid formation, but Roo had a plan. There was a train line that could get you 6 miles of the way along the trail, we just had to walk 7 miles and I could jump on the train to Tyndrum, where we could book a hotel. Roo was keen to hike the whole thing and I was worried about leaving him, but we decided to use his Garmin watch so I could track him. The hotel was weird and I spent the whole time Roo was hiking, washing clothes and drying out our equipment. Showering was excellent though, and we ordered pizza from room service and slept in a real bed!

I felt so much better the next day and ready to get back on trail. Thank goodness, because I needed to. It rained alllllll day. We stopped in a pub at Bridge of Orkey to dry out, and I ordered Cullen skink to try. There were a few others there drying out that we recognised and we bonded over the trials and tribulations of the WHW. We deliberated over what to do with the rest of the day because it was going get down to 6C (44F) with more rain, and gales. Eventually we decided to hike on as we were still in pretty good spirits. Along the way, I managed to get a train to toot its horn so that was a silly morale boost for us too, it’s unheard of in the UK! We hiked 10 more miles into a really remote area and decided to pitch our tent in some woodland to give us a bit of shelter from the storms. As we unpacked our bags, we discovered that neither of our rain covers for our bags had worked and all our stuff was wet. My sleeping bag was dripping wet, and Roo’s was pretty damp too. We wondered what to do but we were too far from anywhere, and it was too late, so we knew we had to just get through the night. It took ages to light the stove but Roo managed it finally, so we ate and hunkered down for the night as best we could. We had one damp tapered sleeping bag between us and it took hours for me to stop shivering. I wondered if we were going to have to call mountain rescue! In the middle of the night we could hear voices too, like someone had pulled up in a car and had the radio on low. We just assumed someone was camping nearby, but in the morning there was no sign. We survived though!

The next day, we hiked to the nearest thing, that thankfully was a hotel. We spent about 4 hours sitting in it drying out all our stuff, shoes by the fire. Then we hiked to Glencoe and the devils staircase and camped just outside Kinlochleven. We slept like babies until 10am after the stress and lack of sleep of the night before.

The final day we had for hiking, we still had 15 miles to go (17 as it turned out). We walked into town and stopped in a pub as it opened for a cup of coffee, then hiked on to Fort William. The way down from the highlands into town went on forever, and when we got there we didn’t even get a good view of Ben Nevis because it was too cloudy. We hobbled to the edge of town to see a big sign that said “the original end of the WHW”. The original end? We followed signs for almost 2 more miles to the actual end of the WHW. Thankfully it stood just outside a pub that made pizza so we celebrated in there, before hiking a further 2 miles to our hotel (what idiot booked that Laura?).

I’ve been rather negative, but we just weren’t as prepared as we should have been. The views were spectacular, the people were lovely and there was at least one great pub everyday to make up for the terrain. Next time, we’ll be ready for it.

Lessons learned on the WHW

1. Don’t just turn up in mediocre hiking shoes that will usually be fine for 10 miles in flat Norfolk. The constant ups and downs will test any good boot, if it doesn’t fit right.
2. Start slowly. Overdoing it in the first day or two could ruin your trip.
3. Hiking poles are essential! I didn’t want to need these, so I had bought one and kept the tag on hoping to return it, but I was hobbling along using it like a walking stick by day two.
4. Ditto for head nets. They were not getting returned either!
5. Make sure your waterproofs are still waterproof! The Scottish weather will test the best.
6. Dry bags inside your backpack will save you when the cover fails.
7. Don’t trust the mileage. Is this because of the ups and downs versus as the crow flies?
8. Cured meat is a winner for lunch as you don’t need to keep it in the fridge and you can get some delicious salamis!
9. Scottish tablet is a great trail snack. It’ll get you through some of those extra, unexpected miles.
10. Allow more time than you think you’ll need, so you can enjoy it more.

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