• Location
• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Reviews
• Further Reading

The High Road and the Low

The West Highland Way is one of the finest, if not the finest, of Britain’s long-distance paths. It passes through six separate mountain ranges, from the tall cone of Ben Lomond and the crag towers of grim Glen Coe, to the seductive Mamores. It runs from Scotland’s largest city, alongside her longest loch, by way of the biggest and bleakest patch of peaty moorland, to the foot of her highest mountain, paralleled in its path by (as it happens) the Highlands’ second busiest main road and also the West Highland Railway.

The comfortable gravel path, the well-placed waymarks and cosy bunkhouses, the cheerful evening singer doing (yet again) Loch Lomond’s ‘bonnie banks’: do these really compensate for not going up any of those mountains? Not when above the stony path there rises the compelling cone of Beinn Dorain, sprinkled at its top with snow. So instead of sticking to the path I wandered up the Auch Gleann and bagged Beinn Dorain from the back, leaving the West Highland Way, over three miles to Bridge of Orchy, technically unwalked.

For those new to the Highlands and the big hills, the WH Way is a dream – and a convenient dream, with its signposts and bridges, its hostels and its shops. But for those more familiar with the hills, it’s a shop itself: a sweetie shop – and you haven’t any pennies in your pocket. For all of those fine mountains are seen, yes, but you’re not allowed to touch.

As Capt Edward Burt recorded in 1765, of the military road that’s now the WH Way: ‘The objections made by some among the Highlanders are that the bridges in particular will render the ordinary people effeminate.’ And it’s happened. It may be Scotland’s best long-distance path: but this book intends to do a great deal better.

Part One takes the line that you’re walking the route of the conventional WH Way, and using its overnight stops; but during the days you divert onto a mountain alongside. When the clouds are down you stay down as well, and walk the official footpath. But when the sun shines, and the twitter of the skylarks is somehow more appealing than the rumble of the A82, here are Ben Lomond and Beinn Dorain, the charming Campsie Fells, and the mighty Mamores; and the best pub-to-pub in these islands, the high-level crossing of the Black Mount from Inveroran to Glen Coe. This is the WH Way idea – the same WH Way overnights, the pre-booked bunkhouse, the luggage transfer service – but higher excitements.

Not all of those excitements are the ever-popular Munros. The first is the Lowland range of the Campsie Fells, rising to a mere 578m. Two later ones aren’t tops at all, but high mountain passes: through the Lui group, and then over the Mamores. Another two are the lesser, and less-visited, hills called Corbetts. And even on popular Ben Lomond you’re not just bagging it and coming back. You’re crossing Ben Lomond to distant Inversnaid, and this takes you onto the grassy northern ridgeline where it’s just you, the view, and some skylarks high above Loch Lomond.

Part One’s four hill outings are simple Munro-bagging. Why not? A well-walked-on path, a satisfying horseshoe route, a number of like-minded people coming up alongside. Plus the convenience of returning to your start point, where the damp clothes of last night have had time to dry, there’s no shopping to do because you shopped for two days yesterday, the bed is still warm from the night before. Those too stingy to use the baggage transfer, in particular, can enjoy the lighter rucksack of the circular day walk.

To qualify as a true Not the WH Way, four or more of the high lines have to be taken, excluding the circular outings. There are eight to choose from: the Campsie Fells (or alternatively the Dumbarton start, Route 17); the crossing of Ben Lomond to Inversnaid; Beinn a’ Choin; Ben Lui’s high pass or else its summit; Beinn Dorain’s back way; the Black Mount Traverse; Beinn a’ Chrulaiste and Blackwater; and the Mamores crossing (or alternatively the Glen Nevis backpack, Route 15). Those who use this book for the circular excursions, along with three or fewer of the off-path diversions, don’t complete the official Not the WH Way. They have achieved what we have to call a ‘Not the Not the West Highland Way’.

When you start walking you hold onto your Mummy’s hand. When you start walking the rather longer distances with the big rucksack, the Mummy is the West Highland Way. It tells you where to go, it makes sure you’ve got somewhere safe to spend the night, it cooks your tea, it even fusses about trying to keep your socks dry. Then as you start to grow up it lets you wander off out of sight – but you’d better be back by teatime.

Grown-ups don’t want to be home in time for tea. Grown-ups stay out late and get into the nightlife. We want to drop our packs under a pylon-free sky, look around and see no street lights, sniff and smell heather – not petrol. We want to gather stones to shelter the stove, and hang our socks in the tree by the river. We want to watch from the high corrie of Ben Lui, as 40 mountains go grey and purplish against an orange sky.

In Part One, the use of the WH Way’s overnight stops and baggage transfer allows backpacking, as it were, but without the backpack. When Part Two attempts your first two-day tent adventure, the ground alongside the Way turns out to be just grand for that as well. There is genuine wild country in the southwest Highlands, between Loch Lomond and Lochaber: big beautiful valleys with craggy mountains rising on either side. But there’s also a pretty good path, there are bothies, there is that bus stop for Glasgow just one day’s walk ahead. Corrour railway station stands at the geometrical centre of nowhere at all: it has a café, and a youth hostel, but not a road leading to it.

So Part Two has tips for beginner backpackers. And after the tips, the trips: a couple of two-day hikes designed to get you going on this game of carrying the big rucksack along the valleys and through between the hills. Learn how to do it not by deep study of the literature, but by doing it, and doing it wrong. Discover for yourself the setting up of a damp camp when you’ve been walking in the rain for four hours. Find out that you should have put your dry pants in a plastic bag. And if you did manage to forget the tent pegs, there’s a bothy alongside to crawl into with the sodden sleeping bag, and a train home tomorrow so that the suffering is at least reasonably short.

Part Three is the proposition that Glasgow (or Loch Lomond) to Fort William is one of Scotland’s good walks, so simply ignore the WH Way altogether. Here are the damp little paths along Loch Etive, and the peaty ways through the heart of Rannoch Moor.

After two days of waterfalls and windswept heather, come down to Kinlochleven (say), do your shopping, eat a big hot meal plus sticky toffee, stay in the hostel there. Set out again at dawn, or whenever you manage to get out of bed (let’s hope it’s quite early). At the back of Kinlochleven is a wooded valley. Waterfalls splash down into a river that zigzags across slabs of bare rock. Walk up the slippery stone path below the birches and the oaks. After four miles you come up to this bleak, bleak reservoir, the Blackwater. You find the old path through the peat, and you come to a lochan, and beside it there’s a beautiful bothy that hardly anybody uses, as it’s not really on the way to anywhere. But if a roof of any sort is repugnant, you can carry on and camp beside the water. All night the ripples murmur against the stones. And at four in the morning, the curlews are crying in the air above your tent.

The fairly good path continues for a couple of hours, through a heathery slot in the hills. It’s Gleann Iolairain, Eagle Valley. You might see that eagle soaring overhead; you’ll almost certainly see some ravens. Come out to the next big reservoir. Now if you turn left, it’s up along a stony stream with waterfalls, and alder trees, and grassy riverbanks for the path; then gradually down again as you’re now in Glen Nevis. You walk below big Ben Nevis on one side, the shapely Mamores range on the other. The heather gets denser, the river bigger, and the air gets slightly cosier as you lose height. Suddenly you’re in the meadow at the glen’s end, with the Steall waterfall tumbling over grey quartzite, and the great tree-hung Nevis Gorge. Then it’s out to the youth hostel for another big meal.

If the twined-together routes of Parts One to Three are the stalk, then Part Four is the flower. As the train clatters south across Rannoch Moor, your feet are sore but your head is filling up with ideas. Outwards and onwards lies the whole of the Scottish Highlands.

The West Highland Way, with its well-made path, its centuries of history, its mountain surroundings, is the best long path in Scotland. But the best is just the beginning. Here’s the follow-on: which is ‘Not the West Highland Way’.