I haven’t written anything personal in almost two years. This is not a guide on how to walk the West Highland Way. It’s not in chronological order and does not explore the benefits of ‘Wanderlust’ and ‘finding yourself’. It’s just a few notes on what I found remarkable and wanted to get down in writing (before I forget it all in my old age).

The Route

96 miles, Milngavie > Fort William. Nine days* travel time.

Camera

Canon AE-1 35mm w/ 50mm + 28mm lens.

Film

Ilford XP2 400.

‘There’s no such thing as bad weather in Scotland – only bad clothing’, displays a slightly plagurised sign on the side of the ‘Green Welly Stop’ off the A82 in Tyndrum, Crianlarich. Nina recalls that she’s been here before, having recognised the yellow bollards leading to the petrol station.

The surrounding strip is reminiscent of a sleepy American town – possibly intentionally with the large population of US tourists walking the WHW (West Highland Way). It even has a bloody gold mine. Across from the truck stop sits the Real Food Café and TJ’s Diner. A board outside of the latter reads ‘No road trip is complete without a visit to TJ’s’. We enquire about tomorrow’s breakfast times with a local lad who is setting up for the evening trade. He says 9am but is trying to convince the manager to open earlier as they will have missed most of the hikers by then. We agree and opt for the Real Food Café for something to eat after the day’s five-hour walk.

To the left of us are a couple from Georgia who we’ve seen at various camping spots along the route. The man’s face was flushed from the day’s sun – ‘today was a little too much for me – I don’t do well in the heat’. “Me neither”, I empathised.

Nina is reading aloud death and accident incidents from the Scottish Mountain Rescue Statistics Report. “Three incidents involved the rescue of dogs, and two the rescue of sheep”.

The man is wearing a cap which has a Psalm woven into the fabric, complete with a star-spangled banner pin badge in the shape of a cross.

“There were 21 fatalities, 11 of which occurred in mountaineering incidents”. An Irn Bru and beer arrives and is placed on the table. “Casualties only have a single injury type recorded, the breakdown of injury types is given below: Fracture (41), Laceration (7), Hypothermia…”. I think back to a Brummie we met travelling in the opposite direction on Loch Lomand, who told us a walker had died atop of ‘The Cobbler’ (Ben Arthur) a couple of days ago. “He was unprepared, caught hypothermia in his tent”.

Like with most media exposure, the scale of such incidents are understated due to their frequency. It turns out that deaths in these remote areas are much more prominent than you would expect. Before we arrived on the trail, a hiker fell 160ft from Buachaille Etive Mór, a Munro in Glencoe we rounded just days later.

The Brummie was on our National Express coach travelling to Glasgow, a solo hiker who clearly had a lot of experience with trails. At 3am outside a service station, he gives us some last-minute pointers next to the smoking coach driver.

Nina checks the definitions of terminology. ‘Benighted’ (overtaken by darkness), ‘Crag-Fast’ (stranded and unable to ascend or descend). A family walks in with a small child and is seated next to us – we decide to stop the moroseness and head back to the campsite.

Mike runs the ByTheWay campsite in Tyndrum. As we walk into the small reception to check in, he cheerfully informs us that ‘everything is broken’. We look around at unlit fridges as I pull out my debit card to pay for our stay. ‘The PDA is broken too’. It turns out there’s a wider network issue that has also affected… TJ’s Diner.

If I can offer one bit of advice which I hadn’t seen on any preparation videos or blogs – cash is still king in these parts. If something goes down, it can take days to fix. There are numerous ‘honesty boxes’ along the WHW where you can drop in some coinage for some sugary drinks and snacks. It might just determine whether you have a good or bad day, so you don’t want to find yourself shortchanged.

Mike is wearing a t-shirt displaying the three UK Peaks and their elevations. A keen walker, mountaineer and motorcyclist, he jokes how he was forced to give one up at the behest of his constantly terrified family and friends. The WHW has many characters like Mike, the proprietors connected through a network of referrals and fellow site owners, hotels and B&Bs. From Nadia at the Inveroran Hotel who fussed over us like a concerned mother (and made us a packed breakfast), to Tracy Anne who we shared a bus ride back to Glasgow and runs ‘West Highland Walkers’ tours.

Although around 35,000 people walk the WHW every year, it’s an extremely lonely trail for the most part We opted to go before the start of the walking season to avoid the infamous midges and to take advantage of the milder weather. Apart from the final stretch into Fort William when Ben Nevis first comes into view and the walkers bunch up like an accordion, it is rare to pass or be passed by others, and encounters with walkers coming from North to South are few and far between. It’s wise to keep your own counsel, for many of those you do interact with along the way will likely become your stinky bedfellows. This is expected on a linear route with limited camping options, but was not something I had thought about before the trip.

On reflection, it was was reassuring to have a constellated community around you to share tips and moments from the day -a shared suffering around the scullery or laundry room. The talk amongst most walkers I spoke to was the difficulty of the Sallochy to Inverarnan segment, running the length of Loch Lomand.

Though we only tracked 110m elevation at its highest point, the trail runs like the teeth on a hacksaw, almost eight hours of continuous ups and downs over rocks and under logs, seemingly never-ending. Progress is incredibly slow-going and demoralising. You look up hoping to see the top of the Loch, but it stretches on and on to a vantage point which never gets any closer. Even speaking to people who have completed the WHW multiple times before were surprised by its toughness – a Scot at the Kinlochleven campsite later told us that the Loch-side path was a new addition to this part of the section, replacing a flatter (and easier) route further up the banking.

Loch Lomand is where we caught up with the Brummie, who had had some interesting encounters while camping off the trail – namely his tent been ransacked by a deer, owl and fox all in one night (the last of which spent the night and was fed porridge in the morning).

Before the trauma of the 29 kilometer day, we spent the night at a designated wild-camping ground in Sallochy. The baggage transfer company ‘Baggage Freedom’ who couriered our large packs along the trail had everything ready for us as usual. After being over-encumbered on the Sandstone Trail a few years ago, making use of a baggage transfer system is a must for a trail this size, if you want to include creature comforts like extra pairs of socks and the MSR Elixir tent we used most nights.

We skim some stones then Nina decides to test the water and go for a swim. I opted to sit on a rock and wash my feet. Nina eases her way into the freezing water as the ripples from a distant speedboat take a full five minutes to lap up onto my shins. The sensation is enough for me to renege on my decision to take a plunge in the morning.

Ever the scientist, Nina is adept at working out the marginal gains of our equipment, and how the smallest of adjustments to the straps on our packs allow us to push on further than we otherwise would have with sore limbs.

I made the novice error of not doubling-up on socks straight off the National Express, with only a short first day in mind. After we took an unscheduled visit to a village near Blanefield, and got LOST on the way back to the campsite, we bolted on an unplanned few kilometers, ending up with a blister the size of a 10 pence piece on the ball of my foot, which I tendered to with Compeed for the rest of the trail.

Rolling into Fort William, we passed the waymark of the original end to the WHW. Minds were squarely focused on the Wetherspoons next to the ‘man with sore feet’ statue, which is now the officially recognised end point. We think about the people we met on the trail, including Michelle, a Frenchman who had spent most of his life living in Pennsylvania.

Michelle was the first person we met on the trail at the starter plinth. He looked like Michael Sheen walking the Camino de Santiago and carried a pocket knife on his left shoulder. We only saw him once after this brief encounter, taking a break on the first hill in Milngavie to look over at the houses leading to the Great Loch.

By the time we had reached Kinlochleven, we were somewhat acquainted with most others we shared the camping plots with. The hamlet was so small it felt like a soap opera film set stuck in time. A bar boasts that they show Setanta Sports, which according to Wikipedia now only screens in post-Soviet states. A community board in the square had notices for ‘the pub’, ‘the church’, ‘the post office’. On the Sunday morning, we sat on a bench with a coffee before the day’s walk. I walked past the local priest coming out of the Co-op with his biodegradable bag in hand.

We are not the most hardened walkers, ardent though we may be. We’ll prioritise hobbies and comfort over the challenge and record-breaking times. Airbeds, pillows and desperately asking hotels and B&Bs if they’ve had any last-minute cancellations. To the average thru-hiker, the thought of carrying a 500g analogue camera in your daypack would be enough to make one boke. I also carried the 300+ page ‘Bicycle Diaries’ by David Byrne – I regret nothing.

In the bar of the Inveroran Hotel, we chat to an ex-forces soldier, pharmaceuticalist and former patron of the Royal Northern College of Music – each on their own hikes. The pharmaceuticalist was bemused by our cameras, having an 6kg maximum for his thru-hiking pack.

If anyone is interested in walking the West Highland Way and has a bit of a budget but not the experience, I’ll honour my promise to Tracy Anne and recommend West Highland Walkers. Tracy Anne knows the trail well and can plan an itinerary to help you on your way.

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*We were conservative with our approach, but could have got down to seven days if we went straight to Drymen from Milngavie and pushed through to Fort William on the penultimate day.