| The West Highland Way | ||||
See Route on ......
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And they're off ....
"You snored,” Colin announced, with the solemn satisfaction of a man delivering evidence to a jury, as we dressed for breakfast.
“Did I?" I replied guardedly. "I’m so sorry, I had no idea. I was asleep at the time.”
It was not, I admit, a formidable defence, but it was technically flawless. Snoring is one of those deeply antisocial habits of which the perpetrator remains blissfully unaware until an injured third party raises the matter in daylight. I had already begun to suspect that my occasional nocturnal chainsaw impersonations might become a point of friction over the coming week.
“Why didn’t you use those wax earplugs I gave you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I tried them. They didn’t work.”
This surprised me, as they had always served me with unfailing loyalty. Once Colin had gone into the bathroom, I examined the rejected plugs and immediately discovered the problem: I had neglected to explain that one was supposed to remove the little cotton-wool membrane before inserting them. In fairness to the earplugs, there are limits to what even modern science can achieve.
Breakfast—the fully committed, ticked-every-box version—was taken around a communal dining table, where walkers of varying degrees of confidence and preparedness gathered beneath the warm fug of toast, tea, and weather anxiety. There was a couple from Newcastle doing the route, like ourselves, in six days; two ladies from the Midlands who had sensibly allowed themselves eight; and a young couple with a baby, who I very much hoped were not about to attempt the West Highland Way with a pushchair and several jars of mashed carrot.
Conversation, unsurprisingly, revolved around the road ahead. Names like Rannoch Moor and the Devil’s Staircase were spoken in the hushed, reverent tones usually reserved for Alpine north faces or medical procedures involving no anaesthetic. It soon emerged that one of the Midland ladies possessed a husband of such absurd outdoor prowess that he might as well have been carved from granite and fed exclusively on Kendal Mint Cake. Apparently he had bagged all the Munros, walked all the long-distance paths, climbed Ben Nevis in all weathers, and possibly once swum the Minch with a corgi under each arm. In his view, the West Highland Way was “too tame”, so he had stayed at home while his wife and her friend tackled it alone. This glowing tribute to his rugged magnificence soon became faintly irritating, not least because Colin and I were manifestly not the sort of audience likely to be overawed by a stranger’s husband. We dealt with it in the traditional British manner—by ignoring her and concentrating very hard on our porridge.
It was Dorothy, our landlady at Croftamie, who drove us back to Milngavie, and a lovely lady she was too, though one whose conversation moved at such a determined clip that there was little danger of anyone else getting a word in. She informed me that she and John had once lived in Bewdley, which is a place I know well and have visited often, but before I had a chance to say so she had surged onwards into a brisk and comprehensive assessment of the weather, which, she felt, looked absolutely dreadful and was quite likely to remain so all week because, after all, this was Scotland. She rounded off this encouraging send-off with the mournful prediction that Conic Hill was going to be “a trial, an absolute trial”, in a tone usually employed for discussing tax inspections or difficult funerals. I suspect she meant to buoy our spirits, but as I stared through the steamed-up car windows at the rain, which by then had progressed from cheerful drizzle to sustained aquatic assault, I could not help thinking she might have a point.
She dropped us at Milngavie station with heartfelt but faintly doleful good wishes, after which the ever-reliable AMS man appeared to fulfil his promise of a waterproof jacket for Colin, thereby saving him from having to buy one at the price of a minor organ. He too wished us well, then everyone drove off, and suddenly we were left standing there alone, with no remaining excuse not to head north into the Highlands of Scotland.
First, however, we took shelter on the station platform and attempted to pull on waterproof trousers with as much dignity as two grown men can reasonably muster while dressing themselves in public like overburdened toddlers. The passengers aboard the 9:50, waiting to be conveyed to a day of offices, invoices, and fluorescent lighting, looked out at us with mild interest through rain-streaked windows. Still, they had probably seen it all before. At worst, we were a slightly more entertaining distraction than the Glasgow Times crossword.
Just as we completed our preparations, the train coughed into life, belched a few theatrical puffs of black smoke, and rolled out of the station. Roughly ten seconds later a young man came sprinting in from the street and stopped dead on the platform, staring in stricken disbelief as his only realistic chance of punctual employment clanked away into the drizzle. It was oddly reassuring. No matter where you are in the world, there is always somebody arriving ten seconds too late for a train.
Fully swaddled now in Gore-Tex, we set off for the precinct and the official start of the West Highland Way. It was, it must be said, an unexpectedly modest opening act for a route of such fame and scenery. One imagines epic journeys beginning with lonely glens, soaring peaks, or at least a dramatic pine forest. Ours began in a damp high street beside concrete shopfronts, a Greggs, and a small knot of local youths discussing, with admirable seriousness, how many Vodka Twistees they had consumed the previous evening.
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Colin at the obelisk marking the start |
Still, we were not alone. Other walkers drifted about in the rain, wrapped in waterproofs and peering into shop windows that remained stubbornly closed on this Sunday morning. There was a sense of unspoken fellowship among us all, the shared air of people on the brink of a small, self-imposed hardship. We exchanged nods, smiles, and those silent acknowledgements walkers give one another, which mean both “good luck” and “I hope your boots are better than mine”.
Colin pulled out the guidebook and stood beneath the granite marker, scrutinising it with such concentration that you might have thought he was planning an assault on the north face of the Eiger rather than locating a clearly waymarked route through town. I took his photograph with my digital camera, then handed it over for my own turn, but failed to explain its workings properly and the picture never materialised. Once again, I had been thwarted in my attempts to record myself heroically embarking on the adventure. At this rate, I thought, posterity would have to make do with a photograph of me limping into Fort William a week and several plasters later.
I also recorded my first short video, panning gloomily along the high street while grumbling about the weather. Listening back to it now, I sound less like a man setting off on a much-anticipated walking holiday and more like someone being marched reluctantly towards a coal mine.
More walkers gathered, until the precinct had filled with a glistening congregation of waterproofed humanity and then, as if responding to some silent signal only walkers can hear, we all moved at once. Down the steps we went, through the car park and out towards the first waymarker. Colin and I, wisely or perhaps just sluggishly, hung back and let the main body surge ahead before following on ourselves. Soon we found the familiar thistle emblem enclosed in its hexagon and stepped onto the green, leafy trail into Mugdock Woods.
A blistering pace ....
At first it felt a bit like the opening moments of the world’s slowest marathon, with everyone quietly but unmistakably jockeying for position while maintaining the outward appearance of relaxed Sunday rambling. We overtook slower walkers, were ourselves overtaken by others, and did our best not to get accidentally absorbed into any organised cluster with matching hats and a group leader called Brian.
After a few miles the field thinned, the little social manoeuvrings subsided, and we settled into a rhythm of our own. Mugdock Woods —now grandly restyled as Mugdock Country Park—made for a pleasant enough beginning, even in the damp. The trail wound through mixed woodland, the dark mass of evergreens broken now and then by broadleaf trees already golden with late-season foliage, their leaves glistening under the morning rain. The place had that soft, enclosed hush that belongs to wooded country in wet weather, where every sound seems a little muted and even one’s own footsteps feel politely dampened. Somewhere nearby, apparently, there was a castle, but we never saw so much as a loose brick from it. What we did encounter, being so close to Milngavie, were local dog walkers: a steady procession of them, coming and going as if this were merely their normal Sunday constitutional and not, as far as we were concerned, the opening chapter of a heroic expedition. I am convinced the dogs were smirking. They looked at us in our full walking gear with the quiet satisfaction of creatures who knew they would shortly be home, dry, fed, and stretched out beneath radiators while we pressed on into weather and miles.
Before long the rain began to ease and a weak, watery sun made a tentative attempt to join proceedings. As soon as the day warmed, however, we started to simmer gently inside our waterproofs like two overpacked Sunday roasts. It was decided that it would be preferable to be slightly damp from the outside than thoroughly steamed from within, so we stopped to peel off our waterproof trousers—an operation which, unfortunately, coincided exactly with the arrival of a group of American walkers around the bend, who were treated without warning to the sight of two Englishmen disrobing beside the path.
Once introduced, they proved surprisingly difficult to lose. For several miles they hovered in our orbit, sometimes drawing alongside to chat, more often hanging back just far enough to avoid actual company while remaining close enough to make their presence impossible to ignore. It was a curious social arrangement, rather like being mildly haunted.
The route climbed gently as the morning wore on, the woodland trails rising through avenues of trees and past the occasional holiday chalet tucked away among the trunks. Small lochans appeared here and there like pieces of broken mirror lying between the trees, and the easy gradients felt like an act of mercy from the route planners, a gradual easing-in before sterner things ahead.
After a short stretch along Broadmeadow road, we crossed a stone stile into the Glengoyne valley, and the scenery suddenly opened out into rough pasture and rolling slopes, the low surrounding hills oddly knobbled, as if they had been moulded by a distracted giant. Here the Americans asked to take our photograph, and I agreed, wearing the bush hat I had bought especially for the trip. That photograph later convinced me never to wear the thing again. In the sports shop mirror it had seemed to promise something rugged and adventurous, perhaps even a touch of Harrison Ford in a remote colonial setting. In reality it made me look more like a disappointed scoutmaster called Cyril, who had popped out to inspect a damp campsite and found the tea urn missing.
Colin tried chatting to the American ladies, but his bad throat rendered his voice somewhere between a hoarse whisper and a nicotine-damaged terrier. Whether they understood him or merely nodded out of politeness, I cannot say.
Eventually we edged ahead and, left to ourselves, drifted into a long and extremely satisfying discussion about Marvel superheroes and how they had evolved since the comics of our youth. I appreciate that many people, if trapped beside such a conversation at a dinner party, would begin quietly searching for the nearest potted plant to hide behind, but we found it utterly engrossing. So engrossing, in fact, that we strode straight past a clearly marked left turn and wandered blissfully off-route onto a busy trunk road.
It took us a minute or two to realise that a famous long-distance walking trail was unlikely to include “flattened by articulated lorry” as an optional challenge. We stopped, consulted map and common sense, and concluded that we had either to retrace our steps a quarter of a mile to rejoin the old railway line or continue along a roadside verge littered with roadkill and automotive debris in the hope of rejoining it further on. The former seemed the better long-term investment. As we turned back, we found the Americans also huddled by the roadside over their map. They had committed one of the cardinal sins of walking: never assume the people in front know where they are going.
“Were you following us?” Colin asked brightly as we passed.
“Nope,” came the reply.
But they did not quite meet our eyes.
Back on the correct route, we joined the old railway line, now a long, straight tarmac path cutting across open country towards the Beech Tree Inn. Glengoyne Distillery sat nearby, its whitewashed buildings neat and inviting in the landscape, but we had neither the time to linger nor the self-discipline to risk it. Happily, being Sunday, it was closed anyway, thus sparing us a moral test we might well have failed.
Ahead of us on the path strode a lone walker whom we at first took to be a young woman, so brisk and energetic was her pace, but when we caught up with her at the inn it turned out she was nearer our own age, simply blessed with that maddeningly youthful compactness that allows some people to look eternally thirty while the rest of us weather like old fence posts. She was studying an information board describing the glorious days when steam trains had once carried passengers along this route in stately comfort.
“How far is it from Glasgow?” she asked in a mildly Glaswegian accent.
“About seventeen miles,” we answered.
“Seventeen? That can’t be right.”
“Well, it is. We’ve walked it.”
She blinked, then realised the flaw. “Oh! I should have asked how far it is from Milngavie.”
“About seven miles, then.”
She looked genuinely crestfallen. “Only seven? Is that all I’ve done? Well… better than the five I thought, I suppose. You heading for Balmaha?”
We said we were, and that we intended to go over Conic Hill rather than take the easier route around.
“Aye, that’s what I’m hoping to do as well. Right then—loads of miles to go yet. See ya!”
And with that she clicked away with her poles like a woman late for an appointment.
We stopped for lunch at the Beech Tree Inn, where, over a baked potato, I made the first ominous discovery of the trip. I removed my boots and prodded my feet with care. There, on the pads beneath my big toes, was that unmistakable tenderness which every walker dreads.
“I’m getting blisters,” I told Colin in the grave tone one might reserve for more intimate medical revelations.
He admitted his own feet were beginning to hurt too. Seventeen miles in and our foundations were already showing signs of industrial unrest. It was not, to put it mildly, ideal.
We crossed pastures and followed winding paths, our feet grumbling more audibly with every mile. If feet could submit formal letters of complaint, ours would have done so by mid-afternoon, requesting immediate retirement to a rug, a fire, and perhaps some minor surgery.
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The Campsie Fells and half a cow |
It looked a long way off.
This was because it was.
Some thirteen miles away, give or take, and we knew that before we could sit down, eat, or feel pleased with ourselves, we would have to climb it, crest it, and descend the other side to Balmaha. We had, in moments of weakness, discussed taking the easier route round its base. After all, by the time we got there we would have covered the best part of twenty miles. But in the end we both knew we would go over it. To skirt around Conic Hill on the first serious day felt faintly like turning up at a fancy restaurant and asking for beans on toast. We were walkers—or at least had spent enough money on boots and maps to justify the label—and so we would climb the hill. It was only a hill, after all. People die falling downstairs, not generally while ascending scenic lumps of Scottish geology. Usually.
The final hurdle ....
The weather, which had spent the day experimenting with different forms of dampness, lurched once more into heavy showers as we made our way on. Two-thirds of the way to Balmaha we took advantage of a temporary lull and sank gratefully onto a grassy knoll in a meadow, only to see an elderly man materialise from nowhere and begin making his careful way uphill across the field with the measured purpose of a man engaged in some private and entirely mysterious errand. I suggested he might be a farmer. Colin, by some extraordinary process of reasoning, proposed that he might be a fisherman, despite the complete and obvious absence of a loch. Before we could determine the truth, the man disappeared and the clouds returned to drop another shower on us, which felt a little like being told off for resting.
We pressed on into higher, lonelier country, where conifer plantations closed around the route and the land began to feel more serious. At one point we reached a tiny hamlet and managed to lose the path entirely, spending several minutes debating whether the West Highland Way genuinely continued through somebody’s garden and took a sharp right through their greenhouse. Another lone hiker arrived, equally baffled, and the three of us stood there in mute uncertainty until a large Dutch group came trudging past, burdened by vast day-glo rucksacks like an overstocked expedition to the moon. One of their leaders, a leathery middle-aged man, wordlessly pointed out the sign we had all missed. Our fellow lost soul muttered something about missing the bleeding obvious and loped off into the trees.
We, unfortunately, became entangled in the Dutch convoy.
There were a great many of them, all heavily laden, all resolutely unsmiling, and none apparently in the mood to exchange either conversation or encouragement. Despite our attempts to break free we remained stuck among them on the rising forest track, swept along in their trudging, joyless migration. They looked like refugees from an especially colourful sporting-goods catalogue. Before long their mood infected us, and we found ourselves plodding along in silence too, heads down, as if condemned to a forced march rather than enjoying one of Britain’s best-loved walking routes.
The track climbed steadily, though, and eventually the trees parted enough to offer us our first glimpses of Loch Lomond in the distance. Even from afar it had an immediate magic about it: that broad spread of water, those dim wooded shores and islands, the faint suggestion of larger hills beyond. I had heard of Loch Lomond all my life, read about it, sung about it, and seen it on television and calendars, but now here it was in person, and the sight of it was enough to brighten even our Dutch-induced gloom.
“How’s your feet?” I asked.
“Sore. How’s yours?”
“Bloody sore.”
And that, really, covered it.
We passed a great stack of abandoned logs by the side of the trail, all green and furry with moss, looking as though some absent-minded lumberjack had piled them there decades before and then been called away to war or tea and never returned. In the dim green light of the forest they looked almost festive.
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Colin and the fuzzy logs |
A few weary-looking men were standing at the fork where the route divided between the easy way round and the direct ascent. They gestured, deliberated, and eventually one of them, a burly Scot, called out to us.
“This is the easy way.”
“I know,” I replied, pointing firmly to the upward path, “but we’re going this way.”
He looked me over with a mixture of pity and, I like to think, respect.
“Oh aye? F*ckin’ fair play to ya.”
Off we went across rough hummocks and marshy hollows, then onto the southern slope itself, where the path narrowed to a rocky little scar and my blisters began pounding with renewed enthusiasm. I stopped for emergency treatment—talc, fresh socks, stern language—and we resumed the climb, hauling ourselves upwards on increasingly tired legs while the views steadily broadened around us. The higher we rose, the better it all became: fields falling away behind us, islands emerging on the loch, long folds of land stretching into the distance.
Near the top the path acquired its own cheerful little stream, obliging us to splash straight through it and soak our feet for the final miles, which felt unnecessarily personal at that stage. At last we reached the upper shoulder of the hill, expecting the summit, only to discover that the main path actually skirted just below it. The true top was another five-minute scramble away. Colin, with energy I no longer recognised as human, decided to do it properly. I elected to sit heavily on a rock and think dark thoughts about my toes.
While he trudged the last few yards to the summit, my mobile rang. It was Father. The wind was whipping over the hillside with such force that I had to shout every reply into the phone like a man trapped in a helicopter rescue.
"Yes, we were fine."
"No, we weren’t overdoing it."
"Yes, we had enough to eat."
"Yes, the views were lovely."
And they were.
Once the call ended I took out the camera and recorded them, because they deserved recording. From that high perch above the southern end of Loch Lomond, with its wooded islands floating on bright water and a rainbow arcing over the loch while evening light sank behind distant mountains, the scene was almost offensively picturesque. It was every shortbread tin, every tourist brochure, every romantic Scottish fantasy suddenly made real. After a long, punishing day on the trail, it felt like a reward of exactly the right kind.
We found fresh energy in it and began our descent.
This turned out to be a terrible mistake.
For while the climb had been tiring, the descent was vicious: steep, stony, awkward, and seemingly endless. On fresh legs we might have skipped down it like mountain goats. In our actual condition, we inched downwards like two sloths recovering from surgery.
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Lovely Loch Lomond |
At length—at very great length—we staggered into the car park of the Oak Tree Inn. Its broad windows glowed with warm yellow light, and beyond it Loch Lomond lay flat and darkening under the evening sky. We had been reduced by then to a pair of silent, footsore wrecks, but the sight of shelter, food, and beer worked on us like a miracle. Fifty yards from the inn, our spirits rose so sharply that I could almost feel the exhaustion retreating in panic.
Inside, there was a large party of French walkers. We knew they were walkers because several of them limped to and from the bar with the stiff dignity of the recently overused. We knew they were French because they were speaking French. As I performed my own slow, rolling John Wayne limp across the room, a few of them greeted me with sympathetic Gallic expressions and much eloquent lip-pursing.
We managed a solid meal, a beer, and the necessary whisky before hauling our battered remains upstairs. Then, just as I was beginning to think no further decisions would be required of me that day, Colin picked up a form and said, “Hey look. A breakfast menu.”
Wearily, like men signing surrender terms, we began to tick boxes.
See Route on ......
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