It’s been exactly 10 years since I first visited the Scottish Isle of Skye.

We took the kids camping there for an autumn school holiday (also known as Tattie Holidays). It was the last year we still had four kids under our roof and I was determined to make the most of every family holiday we had together. We explored the Isle of Skye from top to bottom and east to west. We camped near the Cuillin Hills at night and visited the Fairy Pools, Talisker, the Old Man of Storr, and Neist Point Lighthouse on the far western shore of the island. Our favorite hike was the often photographed Quiraing.

Last summer we returned to the Isle of Skye with a group of friends and stayed in some of the many glamping cabins that have popped up on the isle since we lived in Scotland.

I had been warned by folks from Aberdeen that the island is somewhat overrun these days and we would struggle to find parking for our day hikes. It was much busier than I remembered it, but it wasn’t unbearable.

Taido and I gave early wake up calls so we started hiking before the masses on the days where we were headed to the overly instagrammed, honey pot areas. (I’m looking at you, Fairy Pools.)

But also, I spent time researching less popular hikes. In case we were overwhelmed by the crowds, I wanted to have at least one hike where we experienced the Isle of Skye as I remembered it on my first visit: a wild place full of remote hiking trails that you have all to yourself.

I recalled Skye as an island where you can hike for hours and only meet one or two other people on the way.

And I am happy to say that I found a part of Skye that still felt like the place in my memory.

Oronsay.

While part of our group went off to tour the Talisker Whisky Distillery, the rest of us headed to hike this new-to-me walk that crosses a tidal causeway from the small settlement of Ullinish to Oronsay Island.

I had been watching the tide times, because the causeway out to Oronsay is covered in water during high tide, but the stars aligned and we managed to get out there at just the right time.

For our whole week in Scotland, we had a mix of sun, fog, rain and mist each day. Almost all my pictures are full of moody clouds and brightly colored raincoats dotting the trails.

Unsurprisingly, we experienced a lot of the classic Scottish weather on our trip.

I expect fog and rain in Scotland, and indeed, in the UK. I think it’s part of what makes the blue skies feel so special.

We had already been hiking in the rain on this very day, but in the afternoon across the causeway on Oronsay Island, the sky cleared a bit and we had sunshine on our faces as we wandered the short three mile loop to Oronsay and back.

We stripped out of our jackets and down to our t-shirts for what I think was the only time all week.

From the cliff tops on Oronsay, you can see far out southwest into the inner seas of the Scottish Isles.

When we reached the highest point, we sat there in the grass for as long as we dared, just watching the water and the clouds.

But as the tide was on its way in, we soon headed back to cross the causeway while it was it was still uncovered by water.

On the walk back we stopped for a quick dip just off of the pebble causeway, our only swim all week, so I was so glad I jumped at the chance.

When we got back to our car, we drove to meet the rest of the group at Neist Point, where we hiked out to the lighthouse. The sun was long gone by then, but we still enjoyed our third short hike of the day, and we all had hardy appetites after our full day on the Isle of Skye, which was good because we ended the day with the 8-course chef’s choice meal at the Kitchen Table in The Three Chimneys. A Very Special Treat.

But I have to say, even with the gorgeous meal and several more stunning Scotland hikes in the days following, the hidden gem of Oronsay Island ended up being my favorite part of last summer’s trip to Scotland and a little reminder to me to always look for some new treasure at the edges of my trail maps.

You can find this trail on Alltrails if you’re looking to do it yourself. If you find yourself on the Isle of Skye, I highly recommend you check out Oronsay.

The post Oronsay: A Quiet Corner of the Isle of Skye (and my favorite hike + swim day) appeared first on Alison Chino.

15 miles 

1388 feet of elevation 

We woke up early and SO well rested at the West Highland Lodge. And it was cold outside! Our first truly cold day! Honestly, today we had the Scottish weather I had prepared us for!

We made coffee and tea in the kitchen and took it back to our rooms. 

I always love staying in a hostel along a hike because you get the hiking camaraderie. You have chats around the kettle in the morning about what the day holds and which body parts are aching. 

But it’s nice to have your own room in a hostel so you can spread out and drink your coffee in your underwear if you want. 

I felt like we took our time getting ready but we still headed out on the trail by 7:45am. 

We were going to stop in town for breakfast but the place that was open and sounded good (Leven Bakes) was only a takeaway spot, so we marched on as we all had TONS of food in our bags. There is kind of a scarcity of shops along some spots on the West Highland Way so we kept hoarding and buying food like little squirrels saving for winter. Our backpacks were so heavy with snacks that we said we’d stop every hour for a quick snack on our last day! 

Additionally, because of the change in the weather, we were also carrying hats, gloves, extra layers and all the rain gear. We were loaded down! 

I was honestly glad to get going so early because we had so far to go and heavy rain was meant to blow in at 4pm. With 15 miles ahead of us, I felt like we’d be lucky to reach Fort William by the time the steady rain started.  

So we walked through Kinlochleven one last time, crossed the river and headed up into the woods. 

It’s a decently steady climb out of Fort William. 

We’d put on warm hats/buffs and gloves as we walked through town, but we started shedding layers soon. In the trees we were out of the wind and so we encountered some little midge spots that had managed to survive the cold night. They really weren’t bad but we had midge PTSD from yesterday so we didn’t stop until we got out of the trees and into the wind again. 

Most of this section of the West Highland Way is very exposed, so once we got up and into the wind, we were in it for most of the day. 

It took us about an hour to get to the top of the main climb from Kinlochleven and then the trail widens and levels out a bit. 

It’s such a beautiful stretch. Honestly it’s hard to choose my favorite scenery day on the trail, but maybe because it was our last day and I was starting to feel sad that it was almost over that this day seemed especially gorgeous. 

This stretch is what Scotland looks like to me when I close my eyes and remember our years of hiking and living here. 

The wind was cold so all the layers soon came back out. Earlier in the week we had laughed about the fact that we had warm hats and gloves in our packs, but today we finally used them. And we were glad to have them. 

When your hands are exposed because you’re using trekking poles, you really need your gloves on a windy day. You can’t just pop your hands in your pockets to get warm. 

We found little bends in the hills to tuck ourselves into for snack breaks. We stopped at 9:15 for our first snack and the sun even came out for a minute.

Who wants a piece of shortbread? Anyone want some peanuts? A piece of an orange? 

We were aggressively marketing our snacks to each other. 

I had introduced the gals to Hob Nobs, my favorite British tea biscuit, so we were working our way through Patti’s sleeve of them. And Rhonda even had a package of peanut butter crackers she’d been carrying since she left Little Rock. 

We got moving again, taking photos of the mountain ranges shepherding us along and old stone ruins of a time long ago. 

We felt our first drops of rain at 10:20, much earlier than expected. I tried to ignore them at first. Sometimes it’s just a passing mist. But it wouldn’t be ignored so we stopped and put on raincoats and pack covers. We decided we’d wait for it to get heavier before donning rain trousers. 

Patti has a pink poncho instead of a raincoat and pack cover so you can always tell if it was raining when you look at photos because even from far away, she’s easily spotted. We joked that we should have kept a count of how many times someone made a comment to Patti about the bright color of her poncho. People could not help but comment. 

Well your friends certainly aren’t going to lose you! 

The rain actually didn’t last very long, but the raincoats helped with the wind anyway so we left them on until elevensies, when we pulled them off to sit on the ground and have another snack. 

Then the rain came again around noon and was off and on all day. It was a light drizzle except for one ten minute stretch of heavy rain around 2pm. 

We managed to have our lunch stop out of the rain sometime around 1 after the lower half of Ben Nevis had finally come into view. We had 7 miles left to go. 

There’s a final climb that winds up the trail to a gravel road that you walk all the way down into the valley and I was hoping to be over that last climb before the rain. We got there at about 2:30pm so I was thrilled. 

Home stretch gals! 

We descended into Fort William under the shadow of Ben Nevis which looked ominous under the dark sky. (The girls are hoping to climb it later in the week so I’m hoping they get a better weather day!)

The descent was long, around 2 miles, but it’s a wide gravel service road, a reasonable grade for our tired legs. 

Then the last two miles to the end is a march on the road, always a bit jarring after miles and miles of being in the wild. 

The rain had stopped and we’d warmed up once out of the wind, so we had stripped everything off again. Then about a mile from the end, it started raining hard again so we stopped under a bus shelter and put everything back on. Of course. It was fitting, we said, to begin and end our walk in the rain. 

We finally reached the end at 3:30pm. I was so proud. I asked two young Dutch guys who were also finishing to take our photo and then we took theirs and exchanged stories for just a minute before we wished them a good trip home and headed into the pub across the street to eat. 

Rhonda had said 3 miles ago that she was hungry for something besides a Doo Dad. (She meant a Hob Nob lol). 

We plopped ourselves down in the Ben Nevis pub for a big celebration meal. I had to refrain from taking off my boots and lying down across the chairs. I was surprised by how chilled I was, as I’d felt hot while walking, but I immediately started to get chilled when we stopped. I ordered only hot things. Soup and tea. It tasted amazing. 

After lunch we went and checked into our hotel, maybe our nicest stay of our whole trip, and mercifully, a two minute walk from the pub. 

After hot showers and a couple of hours of rest, we headed back out to the pub for a celebration drink. 

The pub was jam slammed, so we decided to beg a couple of guys to let us join them at their table. They were so gracious, not only did they let us squeeze in but they bought our celebration drinks in congratulations for our finishing the trail. They were over from the Netherlands and planning to climb Ben Nevis tomorrow. The weather looks a bit iffy but I hope it clears for them and they can make it to the top. They flew over especially just to make the climb. 

We had a great time chatting to them and when they left to go have dinner, we had one more drink and then headed off to bed. 

It’s 9pm but it feels like midnight. 

I can’t quite believe I’m not getting up and walking tomorrow. My train leaves in the morning but we’ll have one last breakfast together before I go.

Maybe on the train home, I’ll write down all the things I would have done differently just in case you are reading this and thinking about making the trek yourself. 

It’s a pretty incredible way to spend 8 days or so. Midges, rain and all. 

I’m super grateful to Patti and Rhonda for being willing to come share this adventure with me!!!

The post West Highland Way Day 8 appeared first on Alison Chino.

10 miles

1624 ft

Did I say yesterday that we’d perhaps begun to get a little overconfident about finishing our last couple of days on the West Highland Way? 

Maybe it was that I thought we’d mostly faced the variety of challenges that might arise on our hike that I wasn’t too worried about what was to come. Surely in the last couple days, we might just encounter more of the same challenges we had already faced.

But a couple of new challenges made today, if not our hardest day, at the very least, our most interesting.

To start, no one woke up very rested in our microlodge. When the light came through the window into the cabin, Patti said she’d never in her life been so glad to see the end of a night and I had to agree with her. In addition to the obviously uncomfortable pencil thin mattresses and lack of pillows on our bunks, the cabin was overly stuffy and hot. But we couldn’t open the door overnight because of the midges. 

The midge, or noseeum as we call them in Arkansas, is infamous on the West Highland Way. Anytime you tell someone in Scotland that you’re going hiking in the summer, they will tell you to be aware of the midges. 

In warm, still air, these swarming, tiny black flies are a plague to hikers and campers.

I have experienced them before in several years of hiking in Scotland. Or shall we say more accurately, I thought I had experienced them before.

Last July, Taido and I brought a group to the Isle of Skye and we had midges outside our little cabins in the evenings. When we lived in Scotland, I can remember hikes in the summer when we would sit down to eat lunch and then have to pack up and move on because we had stopped in a spot full of ‘midgies.’

But in all my previous experiences with the midge, we could spray some big spray or move on down the trail a little ways and get away from them. I experienced spots where the midges were bad. 

Here on the West Highland Way, on some of our snack breaks, we’ve had a few biting midges, especially near Loch Lomond in places where the air was still. But we were able to move on from them and find places to stop where they weren’t bothering us. 

Well apparently (and somewhat miraculously, I suppose) in all my previous acquaintance with Mr. Midge, I hadn’t truly encountered the midges about which I’ve been warned. 

Because the plague of midges that arrived the day after the most unusually warm day that Scotland has had all summer wasn’t just right outside our cabin. They had settled into the entire valley and were waiting to devour us. 

I was hoping that as soon as we got away from our cabin, they would improve. My first clue that the midges weren’t only outside our little hut was when our friend from Germany said she had never set her tent up so fast before because of the midges. She described them as a black fur covering her whole body, which gives me the willies even as I type it. 

Breakfast doesn’t begin until 8am at the Glencoe Mountain Resort, but by 7, we couldn’t stand to be in our cabin another minute. I had already tried to take a cup of coffee outside to enjoy the morning air but was attacked immediately and had to go back into the stiflingly hot hut. 

We were just under two miles from the Kingshouse Hotel. We decided to take our chances that we’d be able to have breakfast there. So we packed up quickly, coated ourselves in repellent and made for hotel. 

Here’s the thing about midges. If there is any wind at all, they disappear, and there was absolutely no wind this morning. The clouds had covered the sky overnight but they were just sitting still. 

When there is no wind, you can sometimes get away from the midges by creating your own wind with movement, by walking very fast. 

I marched us as quickly as possible down the road to the Kingshouse Hotel, where we discovered mercifully that they will sell campers breakfast for 10 pounds. It was such a relief to get out of the midges for a minute. We all filled up on eggs and toast, porridge and coffee. We watched others wander inside, clearly chased in by the bugs. There’s no way you’d try to cook your own breakfast in a camp outside in that mess. Your food would be covered. 

The Kingshouse Hotel sits nestled down in the valley, so again, I was very hopeful that we could quickly get ourselves out of the cesspool of midges and then enjoy our day of slowly meandering the rest of our ten miles into Kinlochleven.

After all, there was no rain. It wasn’t cold. And the scenery was incredible. We were walking in Glencoe for crying out loud. We needed to enjoy it. 

From the hotel, I began to lead us in what could only be described as a death march away from the midges.

I walked so fast that they stopped bothering me, but if I stopped to check if the gals were behind me or to snap a photo, I’d get covered up, so I marched on. 

My first clue that the combination of midges and a sleepless night might be making me a little snippy (an understatement) is when I tried to overtake a tourist in front of me who asked me to stop and take her picture. She was driving around and had just stopped her car on the road to walk a little of the trail. I know this because after I snapped her photo, which I thought was very gracious of me under the circumstances, she tried to ask me exactly where the Devil’s Staircase was and how long the path went along the valley before it started to climb up. 

Lord if I know, lady and I’m not pulling out my map now. I’ve already stopped longer than I want to. Can’t you see we are both covered in midges here!??! 

I stepped off the trail to get around her as she was blocking the trail, and left her standing in there trying to decide if she had time to walk all the way to The Devil’s Staircase. 

I thought as I marched on that maybe I needed to keep my mouth closed this morning for more reasons than just to keep the midges from flying in. 

Finally, maybe about a mile later, the path started to curve up to the right and away from the road. The trail was rocky, but dry, so I still marched quickly as, disappointingly, the midges did not disappear as we climbed. If anything, they were even more drawn to us as we sweated up the mountain. My glasses were fogging up from the heat coming off of me, but still I marched on. I glanced back around every bend making sure Rhonda and Patti were still coming but I could not stop to wait on them without getting covered up. 

About halfway up, I passed a few hikers coming from the other direction and said quickly as I passed:

Please tell me it gets better on the other side of this hill. 

Unfortunately not. 

Their reply totally deflated me. We were all hoping a big gust of wind would hit us once we climbed all the way out of the valley.

Surely getting up higher was going to provide relief from the bugs and the muggy weather. 

Nope.

I began to worry that we couldn’t keep up our pace much longer. And at the rate we were going, we’d be in Kinlochleven well before noon. It was Sunday so who even knows what would be open and we couldn’t check into the West Highland Lodge until 3pm. 

Those are problems for future me, I thought. In this moment all I can do is keep going, keep pushing up this hill. 

The top of the Devil’s Staircase, which is really just a series of switchbacks, is the highest point on the West Highland Way clocking in at 1850 feet. 

We quickly reached the top, but there was no real stopping to take it all in as the midges were still swarming. As I looked into the valley on the other side, the clouds were also sitting there just on that side just as still as can be. Not moving. No air was moving. 

And so onward we marched. 

The path going down was a bit less steep so it was easier to go fast, and since I was expending less energy than when pushing up, I stopped sweating so much that I couldn’t see out of my glasses. A tiny reward for making it up and over the Devil’s Staircase. 

Finally, about 7 miles into our 10 mile hike, a merciful breeze began to blow. The clouds that had been nestled at the bottom of the valley all morning began to move. In less than a minute we were walking in fog. I couldn’t see behind me to make sure the gals were still there, so I stopped to wait and the midges, while still present, were not as relentless.

Thank you Lord. 

I was able to wait until Patti and Rhonda appeared behind me, all of us laughing with delight, before I felt bites again. The back of Rhonda’s neck was covered in little black dots from swatting midges that were attracted to her sweat. 

The wind continued to pick up and we could slow down a little bit without the fear of being eaten alive. Thank goodness. The temperature is supposed to drop significantly tomorrow so I guess that cool front was finally beginning to blow in. 

We were all tired before we started this morning, and then we’d pulled out get-up-and-go we didn’t know we had in order to run away from the midges all morning. So it was with much relief that we slowed to a normal walking pace for the last three miles into town. 

We entered a wood just before the town and the midges seemed to be even less present, more like the midge level we had lived with already on the earlier days of the trail, manageable.

We walked into town at 12:30pm.

We went to see if we could check in early, just for kicks and because we were desperate for showers. Of course we were too early but maaaaaybe we could get in by 2:30. So we found a pub that opened at 1. While we waited for it to open we went to the grocery store across the street and grabbed some fruit And snacks for later. We were the first ones in the door at the pub where we collapsed on the couches and ordered cold drinks. 

In the bathroom we washed our faces and tried to spot clean up the best we could until we could shower. I was pulling bugs out of my hair and out from behind my ears. It was disgusting. 

After we caught our breath, we ordered sandwiches and were able to actually talk. I apologized for marching the girls so hard all morning and they were like, what else could we do? 

Also I apologized for vastly underestimating how bad the midges could be. Lots of people buy and wear mosquito nets, although we mostly have only seen people wearing them who are camping, so they can fix their food outside of their tents. None of us had felt the need for a net and honestly they have always seemed a little silly to me. 

Never in all three years of living and hiking in Scotland have I ever experienced midges that bad for that long on a trail. I feel I have finally been initiated and I understand the warnings. 

At 2:15, I left Rhonda and Patti in the pub to check and see if we could please please get in to shower. We were staying at the West Highland Lodge which is the overflow hostel for Blackwater Campground and Hostel, which you pass as you are walking into town. Because the two properties are run together, you check in to West Highland Lodge at Blackwater.

When I walked back to Backwater and the host said we could check in, it was as if she gave me the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I ran back to the pub waving the keys in the air. 

We’re in!

15 minutes later, after we huffed and puffed up the hill to our hostel, because of course it’s above town, we stripped off all our buggy clothes and ran for the showers. They were the best showers in the whole wide world.

And our 4-bunk room is the best room in the whole wide world. It has a window that opens with a screen over it. We flung it open and let that breeze blow in. We have pillows! And mattresses! We can breathe!

I washed out my buggy clothes and hung them on the clothesline outside where the wind was now blowing so hard that there was not a sign of a midge. I sat down at a picnic table outside to drink the water I carried but didn’t drink on the trail and wondered if I had dreamed the whole thing up. 

How could I possibly be enjoying being outside again so soon? Nothing was biting me. And there was no evidence on my skin that anything had bit me. The midge bites don’t really leave marks or itch later, at least not for me. In fact, the biting isn’t the worst of the midge swarm. The worst is the way they are in your face and you feel like you can’t see or breathe, which is of course why one might carry a mosquito net.

This morning I was afraid I would never want to be outside in Scotland again and now I was sitting in a quiet courtyard. The sun was even shining. Rhonda and Patti came outside and I read them the description of tomorrow’s trail as they half-listened and half-dozed in the sun. 

Then we went inside and made cups of tea that we drank on big couches in the hostel lounge. (The common areas in this hostel are lovely.)

At 5pm we wandered back into town for an early dinner at The Bothy Bar. (We planned to be asleep by 9.) The gals had pizza and I had a veggie burger and chips. We all shared some of the best onion rings I’ve ever had outside of the South. 

Then we walked back to the pub we’d been in earlier for a nightcap. It was very busy but a group of locals let us share their table. We got to talking to them and of course we told them about our midgy walk. One of them said the weather is going to break tomorrow. It will be much cooler but we will have rain again. They told us about some of their favorite places to visit in the far north of Scotland. 

Rhonda and I had gotten some different whiskies to try and share, and one of the locals left and came back with a dram of something he wanted us to try, a favorite of his. Old Putney 12-year from the very north of Scotland, in Wick, he told us after we had tried it.

It was our favorite of the night and when we look for a bottle to take home or see it on a shelf, it will remind us of the friendly neighborhood pub in Kinlochleven and the way a day can end in delight no matter how it starts.

Or maybe it was so delightful because of how it started. 

The post West Highland Way Day 7 appeared first on Alison Chino.

12 miles

1700 feet of elevation

Any day that starts with coffee in a comfy bed staring out the window at the mountains is a dream day in my book. 

Then later in the dining room at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, the host gave us a table in front of a wide set of bay windows overlooking the mountains. I had porridge and eggs with spinach. 

We set out around 9am from the hotel, crossing the bridge and heading up into the hills.

For a mile and a half, we followed a steady, smooth incline. For the third day in a row, the sun was shining on us. (I said I’d ordered up the weather and the scenery for my birthday!) What a wild and wonderful gift! 

We reached the top of the first hill marked by a cairn and took in the views. We could see our path snaking through the glen. 

Lots of weekend hikers and campers were out enjoying the finest weather the Highlands have seen all summer long. We’ve been told multiple times that it’s been the wettest summer on record for 100 years. Again drawing attention to what a mercy it is to have three dry days in a row!

The path we walked today is an old drover’s road, which was cut through the moors and the hills to make a level path for caravan wagons and cattle. 

Now it’s maintained for West Highland Way hikers providing gradual ascents and descents. The level trails made the elevation gains and losses seem so much easier.

There’s an Irish walking blessing that you come across a lot on the Camino and somewhere in the middle of it is the phrase, May the road rise to meet you. 

The paths we’ve walked over the last few days truly feel like the road rising to meet us. 

We stopped for a snack on one of several stone bridges after we’d passed the five mile mark. We greeted a steady stream of hikers passing by.

Just a few miles later we stopped again for our lunch on a grassy view point. I had told the gals that we didn’t need to be in a hurry today because no luxurious rooms awaited us. So I even took off my boots and stretched out on the grass in the sun, thinking that there’s really nowhere else I’d rather be on my birthday than on a walking trail with friends. It is my favorite. 

Even taking our sweet time we managed to reach the Glencoe Mountain Resort before 3. Resort is a bit of a stretch. It’s a ski area that has one of its chairlifts open for the summer.

We sat on the ski deck with a cold drink and watched mountain bikers and paragliders making use of the lift. 

After we checked into our hut we rode the chairlift up just before it closed and watched paragliders taking off from the top. The sky just above us seemed to fill with them all at once and then they spread out far.

As we rode back down we could see so far across the valley and hills. It was a fun way to end the day. 

We ordered dinner at the little cafe at the bottom. I had a baked potato with cheese. Then we took our drinks back to our little camp spot. 

Our little hut is called a microlodge plus. It’s a six bunk camp cabin in a long row of cabins at the edge of a parking lot. (The sixth bed is a pull out from the bottom right bed.) We threw our rented sleeping bags on the beds and headed for the coin-operated showers (1 pound for 5 minutes).

After we hit the showers, we put on our semi-clean night clothes and sat outside at the picnic table in front of our cabin watching the parking lot empty out. Munro climbers and mountain bikers came down the hill, packed up their gear and drove away. A few caravans and camper vans arrived. (You can park here for the night for 5 pounds.)

The sun went down over the mountains and we started to get cold so we moved inside and put on some face masks my friend Diane had sent over for my birthday. We laughed so hard at how crazy we looked. Also our cabin bedding this time came with no pillows so we were all trying to make pillows out of whatever we had. Rhonda and Patti used their packing cubes and I used a dry bag stuffed with clothes. We got so tickled that we had to another trip to the bathroom. 

Then the sky turned dark and the stars came out. I think they are even brighter than they were the last couple of nights. And our view over this massive parking lot is wider. Just gorgeous. 

I would never have thought to ask for a 6th grade camp cabin bunkin’ party on the edge of a ski resort parking lot for my 51st birthday, but what a delight it has been.

Our giggles finally subsided and the gals are now snoring in their bunks, resting up for tomorrow when we climb something called The Devil’s Staircase. We may be getting a little cocky because we’re not too worried about whatever tomorrow is going to throw at us. We only have two days and 25 miles left. 

And we know how to shower in under  5 minutes.  

Bring it on, West Highland Way. 

The post West Highland Way Day 6 appeared first on Alison Chino.

7 miles

383 ft of elevation

I was determined to stay in these little Hobbit huts on this trip as they are adorable and cozy.

And I would 100% stay in them again. (We are staying in something similar again in a couple of nights.) But it is noteworthy that the huts are part of a campground, so I got to make several night walks through the campground to the shower and bathroom block in the center.

It was cloudy the first two times I made the trip, but on my 4am loo visit, the sky had cleared and the stars were out. It’s been a hot minute since I could see so many stars at night in the UK, and I had to stop and stare for a while, until I was too chilly to be outside anymore.

I haven’t done much camping lately and I miss it. Well, I miss parts of it. I miss being around a campfire and seeing the stars and living outside. 

I think that the little huts in the campgrounds you find along the West Highland Way are a great compromise to camping. If I did it again, I think I’d pack a sleeping bag and stay in more of them. (We are renting sleeping bags on the couple of nights we’re doing it this time.)

I also enjoyed getting to chat to the campers. There are so many folks carrying all their gear and camping on this trail, most of them a good bit younger than us. But we enjoy cheering them on when they pass us (with packs three times the size of ours) and hearing where they set up their tent and how they weathered the rain. So it was fun to be at the campground with lots of them for the night.

Our favorite camper is the gal we met from Germany on the first day and she was in the same campground as us, so we got to walk part of the day with her today.

She was still asleep when we went to breakfast at 7:30am in town at The Real Food Cafe. We sat in the little dining room because we weren’t in any hurry to get going. We all three ate porridge with seeds, nuts and honey for breakfast. A welcome change.

When we got back to camp, most everyone had packed up and gone but our sweet friend was still getting ready. I stopped and got her number because I told her she’d probably get ahead of us today so I wasn’t sure we’d see her again. Most everyone else is going on a good bit further than 7 miles.

We headed out before her but even with a huge pack, she caught us later and hiked with us a good bit of the way to Bridge of Orchy.

We were taking it slow today as we didn’t want to arrive at the hotel too much before our check-in time.

Plus we just wanted to soak in the sunshine and not be in a hurry. After all, this was our rest day.

We stopped at an inviting stream for second breakfast.

We paused for any photos we wanted to take or to look up the name of a mountain we were walking along (Ben Dorain) or to watch a train go by.

We stopped and talked to an 80 year old man who was hiking this trail for the 5th time. (My hat is off to you sir!)

The only task was to enjoy the day. Which is pretty easy to do when the path is a gentle 7 miles in the sun. It was another day where our rain gear stayed in the bottom of the packs.

We arrived at the happily-situated Bridge of Orchy Hotel shortly after noon. We sat down and had a drink with our friend.

We compared trail notes and laughed in the sun. We sat there so long that we decided to order lunch. It was a luxuriously slow afternoon!

Finally at 2, our friend decided she needed to push on. I walked her to the bridge and wished her well for the 12 more miles she had left!

Then I went down to the river, took off my boots and had a good long soak. I can’t actually believe it was warm and sunny enough in Scotland to be soaking in a river. I saw a whole family strip down to their underwear and get all the way in for a swim! What a day!

After a while I went and got showered and settled at the hotel. We washed clothes and set them in the sun to dry. I had a wee nap! Ate a plate of vegan haggis, neeps and tatties for dinner. And sticky toffee pudding of course. Tomorrow is my birthday so we called tonight’s gorgeous meal my birthday dinner and the waiter brought us wee proseccos on the house. So much fun!

Our German friend texted sometime around 7pm that she had made it and that it was the most beautiful stretch of the hike so far. We’ve been told something similar multiple times now by locals, so I’m so excited to get out there and see it!

I think it’s a clear night so I’ll just peek outside and check on the stars before bed.

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Inverarnan to Tyndrum

12 miles

2313 feet

Today was one of those days that could convert even the most confirmed city girl into a lover of hiking.

The sun came out and stayed out.

The paths were smooth.

The views of the surrounding hills were gorgeous.

It was an absolutely perfect day!

Of course I started the morning by setting the fire alarm off in the aforementioned not-my-favorite inn.

(I know those tiny little motel hair dryers aren’t really meant for my wet boots.)

I have never packed up and gotten out of a place faster.

We walked away laughing, and we kept smiling all day.

The weather report of no rain in the forecast made it even sweeter that we were starting out under a sunny sky. We all still carried our rain gear, but it went in the bottom of our packs, underneath our lunch instead of on top. That’s the kind of confidence we had that it wasn’t going to rain.

Then we ran into another hiker we’d met the day before at an Honesty Box and he told us it was going to be an easy day.

Yes please.

He didn’t lie.

Even with twice the elevation of yesterday, today’s walk was easy going. Almost all our paths were smooth trails. We walked some forest service roads We ambled along miles of paths that had been recently laid with gravel. And we travelled down many just generally pleasant straight trails that were not covered in mud.

We saw the occasional stone or tree root that reminded us of all we’d walked on Day 3, which made me wonder if we would be appreciating the texture of the trails so much if we hadn’t had to work so hard the day before.

If yesterday hadn’t chewed us up and spit us out, would today have been just another hiking day?

Would we have taken the time to notice how smooth the trail was around every bend?

Look at this nice trail!

Can you believe how well-cared for this path is?

I can just walk straight without having to climb over anything!

When we ate our picnic lunches outside on a hill in the sunshine, we had already walked the better part of our 12 miles to Tyndrum.

And we had crossed the halfway point of the West Highland Way!

We were still tired at the end when we wandered into town at 3pm, but we didn’t feel like we’d been beat up.

I think that 12 miles is exactly the right length of a walk for me. Doing more than that can make a day stop feeling fun. I’d like to squish all the stages into 12-mile days.

The next official stage is 19 miles. But I’m just too old for 19 miles in one day, so we’ve broken it up into two days.

Tomorrow is basically going to be a rest day. Only 7 miles and more sun in the forecast.

With all the extra time, I’m hoping for a nap in the sun!

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14.5 miles

1430 feet of elevation 

Day 3 started with a line for toast and coffee, a trip to the shed outside to put our bags for the transfer service and the most unreal blue sky over our heads. 

Really. I haven’t seen a sky that clear in the UK in a minute. 

It was so bright blue that we heard a man exclaim over breakfast that he wasn’t even going to carry his rain gear. (Bold move, sir.)

Of course we carried our rain gear, but we enjoyed not needing it all morning. We also enjoyed walking through sun-drizzled forests covered with carpets of moss and old rock walls sprouting ferns.

It was just a beautiful morning. I kept telling myself to remember the sunshine when the rain started later, as my weather app promised me it would. 

It’s a trick for me to not rush the beauty of the sunny part of the walk when I know it’s going to rain later. 

How many miles can I get behind us before the rain comes, but still enjoy this part? 

Almost all of today’s walk was along Loch Lomond, and though the elevation count was not as high as yesterday’s, nor as high as tomorrow’s, this stretch between Rowardennan and Inverarnan is often declared to be the hardest part of the whole West Highland Way. 

And now we know why. 

When you look at the map, it seems like you’ll just be meandering alongside of the loch for the better part of this stage, but actually the trail is like hiking the letter W all day long. 

And that’s not all. The letter W’s are covered in rocks. 

Chunks of it feel a bit like what I imagine bouldering to be like. You often have to put your poles in one hand so you have one hand free to grab onto a rock. 

The thing about this kind of walking is that..

it

is

slow

going. 

You can’t get in a hurry or you’re going to fall. 

You have to give all your attention to your steps, so much so that you might hit your head on an overhanging branch, not that we know anything about that. I’m just saying it could happen. 

Even with heads down trying to negotiate the rocks, we paused often to peek at the loch or to appreciate that we were walking in dry weather. 

Y’all! Can you imagine walking on these rocks when they are really wet? 

(We would not have to imagine. Soon we would learn.)

We reached our lunch stop shortly after noon. The Inversnaid Hotel has a dry picnic room for hikers where you can eat your own food or you can order something inside at the bar. You can use their bathrooms and they have a water fill station. A big thank you to them for setting all that up!

I brought a stuff sack full of protein bars and nut butters with me on this trip because they help me keep going better than the food you can buy along the way, so I ate my own food while the gals ordered up soup to add to the snacks they were carrying. 

In the short time we sat inside, the blue sky disappeared and rain clouds rolled in. By the time we started to gather up our stuff, the folks walking in were wet. 

So we reconfigured ourselves into rain gear (and hoped that the man from breakfast had reconsidered) before heading back out on the trail. 

7 miles left.

It was time for more climbing up and down letter W’s and now navigating them in the rain. 

Friends, the afternoon of Day 3 properly wore us out. We ate extra snacks under tree cover and counted down the miles to Inverarnan. We looked forward to our dry rooms. 

The rain shifted back and forth between being a drizzle and steady drip. It never seemed to downpour quite as hard as on our first day, for which we were very grateful. Even as hard as it was, we all said it would have been much harder in the weather from Day 1.

It finally stopped raining and the sun came out a little over an hour before we reached the end, so we stripped off our wet things (even the best gear has a saturation point) and hung them on our packs to dry. Then of course it started it clouded over and started raining again. 

On again, off again. 

At the end of the trail we left the loch to climb a hill that heads over to a river that runs into the loch, where Inverarnan is. The views back towards Loch Lomond were just lovely, even in the rain. We bid the loch goodbye and pushed on ahead to our finish.

Finally Inverarnan came into view. There isn’t much there. A campground, a b&b and an inn that’s been around for 300 years. 

About a quarter mile before we reached the inn, and after we were down off all of the treacherous rocks, as we were walking on the road, I managed to trip and fall spectacularly. A big face-first, star-shaped splat all the way on the ground. Muddy knees and belly.

Classic. 

It seems like my worst falls are always at the end of a walk. 

I hopped back up and carried my injured pride on down the road.

Dripping wet, we walked through the front door of the inn just after 5pm, our longest day yet.

I think a few changes have been made to the inn since it opened 300 years ago, but it’s hard to tell. I’ll refrain from writing something that sounds like a bad TripAdvisor review but suffice it to say that after a long, slow slog of a day, the rooms were a disappointment. 

My friend Kandace and I have stayed in some dumps together and she often says that sometimes a place is so bad that you’d rather be in your tent. 

She’d definitely be saying that tonight. 

But the food was hot and the beer was cold. (As always, being really hungry helps.)

And the sun was shining on me this morning. 

Remember the blue sky. 

Remember the little songbirds flitting through the forest.

Remember the moss, the trees, the ferns, the waterfalls.

It was a beautiful day. And I’m very proud of our little feet for how they carried us over the letter W about 1008 times. It’s time to put them to bed so they can do it again tomorrow. 

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Drymen to Rowardennan 

15 miles

2204 ft of elevation 

Breakfast started at 8am in The Drymen Inn, which we did good to make, even though we’d been drinking coffee in our room since 6:30am. It was just that we found it difficult to move from our beds. 

But it wasn’t raining when we woke up and our boots and many other wet things spread out all over our hotel room seemed to have mostly dried overnight. So things were looking up for Day 2. 

I opted for poached eggs on toast over the full Scottish breakfast. Plus tea. 

Our host at the Drymen Inn was delightful and so excited we were from the south. She and her mother made a pilgrimage of their own to Tennessee to visit Dollywood and The Grand Ole Opry. She’s got the cowboy boots to prove it. I’m sorry we’re going to miss the weekly karaoke night at the Drymen where we hear Dolly Parton songs make a strong showing. 

At 9am we finally said goodbye to Drymen and headed back to the trail. I think we walked for ten whole minutes before it started raining. But still we didn’t START the day in the rain, so that’s something. And the rain was just a mist. 

But it meant stopping and getting out jackets and rain covers because in our optimism we hadn’t walked out in rain gear. 

The first half of the day involves a long climb up Conic Hill, the top of which was covered in clouds, as soon were we. 

We hear the views from the top are lovely but we’ll have to trust the guidebook on that one because we didn’t see them ourselves. 

For the second half of Day 2 (and most of Day 3), we would walk along Loch Lomond, the biggest loch in Scotland. It’s also kind of the boundary between the Lowlands and the Highlands in Scotland.

We glimpsed our first prekabooj views of Loch Lomond on the way down as we came out of the clouds.

The highlight of the morning was probably the gorgeous wood we walked through on the descent from Conic Hill into the little loch side village of Balhara. 

A close second were the Chai Lattes at St Mocha’s Cafe when we arrived in Balhara.

It was supposed to rain harder in the afternoon so we didn’t do a long lunch stop like the day before. A quick bite and we were on our way. 

Miles to go yet, hobbits. 

7.5 miles to be exact. 

And still a few shorter hills to climb. 

The path between Balhara and Rowardennan runs along Loch Lomond but it doesn’t just stay level with the water. It winds up into the trees and then back down along the shore of the loch, and then again into the trees and down again and repeat and repeat. 

There was a pub on the water about a half mile from the hostel where we were staying, so I said maybe we could stop there for a drink before the last half mile. A little pick me up. 

Looking forward to that drink got us through those last three miles. It rained on and off all afternoon.

When we reached the pub and sat down, we weren’t sure we’d made the right choice. 

Were we going to be able to stand up and get moving again? 

Miraculously we did. 

And even more miraculously the rain had stopped and the sun was shining over Loch Lomond and Rowardennan Youth Hostel, which used to be a Victorian hunting lodge. 

It was our first hostel night. The three of us had our own 6 bunk room (no top bunks for us). 

There were shared bathrooms and showers and a dining room where we put our dinner order in upon arrival. We went for burgers. Mine was black bean and it was amazing. I’m not sure that it actually was good but it was the best of my life. Same for the shower. 

After dinner I went into the lounge to study my guidebook and ended up talking for a while to a sweet gal from Germany that we met yesterday on the trail. She is solo camping as she walks so she has to carry all her gear. She was set up in one of the hostel pitches outside so she could use the showers and kitchen inside which is such a lovely arrangement.

We were both appreciating being clean and dry. When I left the lounge there were lots of folks playing cards or sitting and reading, getting ready for tomorrow like me. 

Snug as a bug in my (warm and dry) bottom bunk, I’m ready to sleep and do it all again tomorrow. 

Man, do I love trail life. 

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Milngavie to Drymen

12 miles

Elevation: 1358 ft 

I fell asleep to the sound of rain coming down hard on the pavement.

When I woke up it was still steadily coming down. I swirled a little instant coffee into some hot water and crawled back into bed with my mug. 

I studied the maps and trail notes, prayed for an open heart to whatever the day would hold, and drank my coffee. I thought:

It’s good to be warm and dry for a little longer.

By the time we ate our breakfast, packed up and delivered our bags to the train station to be magically carried along to our next stop, the rain had lightened. 

We took our first steps onto the West Highland Way in a drizzle rather than a downpour, an important distinction. And a gift.

We entered a wood right as we left the town of Milngavie, which oddly is pronounced ‘Mull-guy,’ a detail that makes it difficult to find if you’re asking locals for directions from Glasgow.

The little wood spread into a forest with ferns and moss-covered trees. The path was drenched from all the rain. It’s been raining here for weeks. But we stomped happily through and as much as possible, around, the puddles filled with first-day enthusiasm. 

Here we are!

We’re doing it!

For a while the rain stopped. We even shed our jackets for a mile or two. But we kept on our mud-splattered rain trousers, knowing the rain would return.

It started falling again when reached our first stop along the way: The Glengoyne Distillery. 

You can’t hike in Scotland without stopping for whisky. 

We decided to forgo the 75-minute official tour and tasting. 

But with clean bathrooms, a water-filling station and plenty of tiny bottles for sale, the folks at Glengoyne are clearly expecting the wave of West Highland Way hikers that roll through the valley. 

We each got a tiny bottle and headed back out into the rain. 

Not for long though. We stopped for lunch less than a mile later at The Beech Tree where we dried out for over an hour with lentil soup, hot sandwiches and tea.

It started raining much harder while we were in the cafe and we watched many hikers come in dripping wet before we finally suited up and headed back out. 

We had five miles left and it rained hard for four of them. We went from damp to wet to sopping as we marched through the rain. You can’t really hear each other when it’s raining that hard so we didn’t chat much in the afternoon.

Sometimes I find that heavy-rain walking can take me to a meditative state of just stepping one foot in front of the other, but the trail was so covered in mud that I had to focus more on the steps. We were zigzagging around the paths all day trying to keep the water from sloshing up over our boots. But eventually I found this effort so trying that I started to just splash straight through the path. 

Once I gave up on the effort to stay out of the puddles, the walking became much easier and I wished I had just done it that way from the beginning. 

I’ve had so many similar experiences with walking in water. I remember on the Ouachita Trail that I spent so much time trying to keep my boots dry all day only to get them soaked in the last few miles of the day. 

But I suppose even if your feet are only dry for 75% of the day, that’s more enjoyable than being wet for 100%. 

The rain finally let up towards the end of the day. It turned to a light mist as we passed an adorable honesty box outside a house with fresh baked goods inside. We shared the most delicious homemade energy bar which just pushed us over the finish line. 

After climbing to the top of our hotel, we all three collapsed on the floor of our room in The Drymen Inn, too tired to shower but not wanting to get our beds dirty. After parading wet boots back down all the stairs to the drying room, we took turns showering and headed to dinner at the oldest licenced pub in Scotland, The Clachan Inn.

We split a starter of salmon, just to keep from gnawing on our arms and then I devoured a mushroom and fennel pie with chips, washed down with a local lager. We were full but that didn’t stop us from sharing a sticky toffee pudding, my very favorite dessert in Britain. 

We crawled back to our hotel room and shared our whiskies before bed. Between us we had the 10, 12 and 15 year from Glengoyne. 12 year was the winner. It’s the cherry cask, according to the man in the shop. We’ll be on the lookout for more. Good thing we still have seven more days and 83 miles left of the West Highland Way.

Right now we’re thankful to be warm and dry.

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It’s one of those trips that evolved out of email exchanges and fellow hikers’ hopes and dreams. When a friend told me last Christmas that they wanted to do a through-hike in Scotland this year, I remembered that when I first moved to Scotland over 10 years ago I studied the West Highland Way in depth and tried to carve out time to hike it then. 

Instead I wound up doing the Coast to Coast walk across England. Which was fabulous of course. 

At that time, the idea of doing a through-hike so close to my home seemed a bit silly. We had plenty of trails within a day’s drive from Aberdeen that we could explore and still sleep back at home in our own beds. So I put the West Highland Way map and guidebook on the shelf. 

But it seems like forgotten hiking dreams roll back around in their own time, and when I received a request for hiking in Scotland, the West Highland Way came back to my consciousness. 

So now here we are. After eight months of planning and training, I’m headed for the trailhead in Milngavie.

It’s actually been over a year since I walked as many hills in a row as I’m about to in the days ahead.

Last summer, just weeks away from my 50th birthday, I hurt my knee coming down one too many Alps. (Pictured below: August 2023. Last day of hiking in Switzerland. Leaning on Taido all the way down and puffy-eyed from crying.)

I was ‘out of the game’ for a few months, during which I read every single fantasy novel by Sarah Mass. All three series. Twice. My favorite is Throne of Glass. #obsessed

Then I started swimming, reluctantly. And puttering around on easy trails. I continued to loop the Downs about a thousand times. 

By March I was ready to push myself a little more. Every couple of weeks I would get out into the hills again and then come home to spend three days on ice and in recovery. 

In April, I led a low-grade walk in France where we averaged about 4 miles a day. Baby steps. (Mostly I had long lunches in old village squares, took one thousand pictures of wisteria in bloom and ate my weight in pastries. It was delightful!) 

In May I returned to the Camino, my first string of long days in a row, but with minimal elevation. (Again, many long lunch breaks con cervezas por favor!)

In June, Mary Polly came to Guernsey with me to do some easy coastal walking (and to explore an island that has lived large in my imagination since my book club read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society many years ago!) 

Since then, the summer has been a long, luxuriously slow mix of countryside and seaside walks in the UK, with a few long hill walks along the way. I’ve gradually returned to climbing up hills, but when Taido and Simon made the annual pilgrimage to Greater Heights (this time to the Dolomites), I stayed behind. I was so sad to miss (the FOMO was real!) but it was the right decision for this year. 

My parents made the long haul flight over to hang out with me while they were gone. We went to Pembrokeshire, where we did a lot of walking in the rain by the sea. (Also we saw puffins!!)

Which brings me to today. I’m having a pint while waiting for the train that will take me to the start of the West Highland Way and the greatest challenge I’ve faced since injuring myself last year.

This right-before-the-start-of-the-walk feeling is so familiar. 

But also it’s been a minute since I sat with this particular brand of unknowns:

Will I make I all the way from Milngavie to Fort William?

Will I finish strong or come home and need to enter recovery again?

Will it rain every day? (Probably)

Did I forget something? (Almost certainly)

Did I bring the right gear? (Almost certainly not)

Will I be able to sleep in the bunkhouses? (Sometimes)

Will I get us lost? (Maybe)

Will I be glad I did it? (For sure)

What is crazy is that in about 10 days and 100 miles I’ll have the answers to all these questions but they won’t seem to matter anymore. 

Hopefully I’ll have remembered in my very being that all that matters is the next step. 

And right now my next step is to find my train platform. 

Everything else will sort itself along the way. 

So raise a glass with me to new adventures!

Cheers y’all!!!

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