Walk the west highland way

With a good pair of hiking boots, and a week to spare, this is how to see Scotland

By Ethan Gilsdorf, Globe Correspondent  |  July 10, 2005

GLASGOW -- ''We have come over heath and rock and river and bog to what in England would be called a horrid place," wrote the poet John Keats in the summer of 1818, during a trek with his friend Charles Brown into the Scottish Highlands. ''We have now walked 114 miles, and are merely a little tired in the thighs and a little blistered."

Not bad for a 5-foot-tall, 19th-century man who never knew the luxuries of Gore-Tex and bug repellent and had just recovered from a mysterious illness rumored to be venereal disease.

Keats drew his strength from this jaw-dropping Scottish scenery, which helped him transcend the limitations of what he called his ''stature." The landscapes, he wrote, ''make one forget the divisions of life -- age, youth, poverty, and riches."

But let's forget Keats, who, after contracting a cold in Scotland that turned into acute tonsillitis, was finished off by tuberculosis three years later in Rome. During my own six-day tramp through the Scottish countryside -- along the West Highland Way, Scotland's first and most popular long-distance hiking trail -- I was reminded of my puny stature and life's painful divisions every step of the way.

Take day four. Clive, an Englishman, and Jim, a Scot, were two 70-somethings I overtook while trudging through the deluge of day three. But during the next day's 19-mile stage, they passed me somewhere between Crianlarich and Tyndrum, arriving a good hour before me at Bridge of Orchy.

Had my huge backpack not been transported by car each day to my designated hostel or bed-and-breakfast, I might not have felt so bad. That's because Clive and Jim had hauled all their gear, on their backs, the entire 95 miles.

They were still chipper when I finally had the nerve to introduce myself that evening in the hotel bar.

''Most retired people are just counting their days till the end," said the white-bearded, luxuriously tanned Clive. He once climbed part of Mount Everest and has hiked most of the Appalachian Trail. ''All you need to do is keep fit."

''Cheers," said Jim. They smiled at me across the table, and raised their glasses.

Cheers.

I smiled, but it felt more like a wince. I took a deep gulp, imagining their disgust at this traveler nearly half their age taking the easy way out. Not that the West Highland Way is a competitive activity. But, like a swelling blister, a rivalry festered, irrationally, inside me. In the shadow of these men, I felt like a charlatan. After two pints, I stumbled back to the West Highland Way Sleeper, my railway station hostel. Rising steeply from the glen like a squat volcano, Beinn Dorain, a 3,529-foot ''munro" (peak over 3,000 feet), dominated the valley, soaking up the dregs of the disappearing sun at 10 p.m. I felt even smaller.

In the hostel's kitchen, I inhaled my haggis-in-a-can and, joints aching and soles throbbing, entered the bunkhouse. Collapsing onto my bed, I remembered I had a 21-mile tramp the next day.

Everyone in Scotland seems to have walked parts of the West Highland Way, which officially begins at a granite obelisk in a town called Milngavie, 20 minutes by train outside Glasgow.

While marching along, you can jabber for hours beside total strangers, exchanging stories, discussing homelands, politics, and beer. ''Where'd you start today?" and ''Where are you headed tonight?" are excellent icebreakers.

I hiked solo, but I was rarely alone. On day two, I marched beside a man out walking his dog in the Garadhban Forest. Day three, in an old-growth oak grove beside Loch Lomond, I passed a couple who told me they had done the Way seven years before. ''Today," the man said from under the hood of his rain slicker, ''we're just out stretching our legs."

That serious walkers intersect with the rhythms of local residents is one reason the Way is one of the world's best multiday treks. It's also adaptable to a hiker's desire for creature comforts and unpredictable levels of stamina. You can sleep in establishments with hot meals and showers, or pitch a tent and cook by the campfire. You can race through in six days (as I did) or extend the trip over seven, eight, even nine days (as many I met had wisely done). You can go alone or with a guided group.

I had selected the Way because the relatively flat, well-marked trail seemed doable for a novice like myself. I figured the primary difficulty would be getting my tender feet and creaky knees to keep up a steady pace for six to 10 hours, every day, for a week.

The Way traverses some of the Highlands' most scenic glens, and skirts Britain's largest lake, Loch Lomond, and Ben Nevis, its tallest mountain. With its varied vegetation and geology, this swath of west central Scotland does, as Keats said, ''live in the eye." In late May, I would cross carpets of wild onion, bluebell, and primrose. I would see rabbits, sheep, and feral goat. I would hear stonechats, cuckoos, and warblers.

Rather than take on all planning myself, I signed up with Macs Adventure, a walking tour company run by the enthusiastic Neil Lapping. Lapping arranged my lodging, baggage transport, and entire itinerary. He even lent me a pair of hiking boots. The evening before my departure, over beer in Glasgow's West End, he debriefed me, pulling out the maps and guides I would be using and explaining the beauty of the Way.

''The experience can be social, or you can have peace and quiet," Lapping promised.

He was right. Often following an 18th-century military road, the trail penetrates zones of total isolation. But just when you need a phone booth, a plate of ''neeps and champit tatties" (yellow turnips and mashed potatoes), or a pint of ale, a small hamlet appears around the bend. Those dangling McEwan's and John Smith's signs were like carrots on sticks. I began to think of the West Highland Way as a 95-mile pub crawl.

When my mood fluctuated, I didn't attribute it to oversocialization or physical effort. The weather, though, sometimes dragged me down. By the end of day two, fog and drizzle seemed drawn to the loch. For most of the third stage, scrambling along the rocky trail that hugged the shoreline, I slogged through a steady downpour. At times, the trail was a cascade.

Keats's experience of July 26, 1818, was much the same: ''Among these Mountains and Lakes . . . I have got wet through day after day -- eaten oat-cake, and drank Whisky, walked up to my knees in Bog, got sore throat."

About two hours after passing Rob Roy's Cave, a huge jumble of mossy boulders where the infamous outlaw-hero was said to hide out, I finally arrived at the Drovers Inn, a former shelter built in 1705. Never had I been more thankful for a bar this dingy and malodorous. As afternoon changed into Saturday night, the mixed group of tourists and locals grew more unruly. A ponytailed guitarist arrived and played note-for-note replicas of anthems by Black Sabbath, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Scruffy Scots tossed down pints and drams of whisky, then lifted their kilts to moon the hearth.

''Sweet home Alabama!" they chanted until 1 a.m. ''Where the skies are so blue!"

On Sunday morning, I hiked past sheep pasture strewn with tumbled walls and into Bogle Glen's groves of coniferous trees. As I passed more leisurely hikers like Jeremy and Janice, I finally caught up to myself.

''Oh, you must be that writer," Jeremy said nonchalantly. Rumors of a ''travel journalist" asking questions at the Drovers Inn the night before had already passed up the multinational chain of hikers curling across the vaporous countryside.

The English couple and I walked side-by-side for a couple of hours, and then we met up with Gabriella and Michael from Switzerland, whom I had not seen since eating bowls of muesli together at the Rowardennan Youth Hostel the previous morning. When Janice, Jeremy, and I stopped for our picnic lunch at the remains of St. Fillans Priory, the Swiss couple walked ahead. I forgot to say goodbye. An hour later, Jeremy and Janice detoured at Tyndrum. I never saw them again.

I didn't need other people, I told myself. I was tough and craved the privacy of my own mind. I found solitude by striding ahead and keeping my mouth shut. On day five, the drover's road to Glen Coe veered into Rannoch Moor, a massive blanket of scrubby bog, heather, and bilberry. Under pristine skies, visibility extended 10 miles. I played a game, trying to match the shape of a shadow on a distant hill to the cloud that cast it. I thought how words, cameras, and watercolors never adequately capture how, over great expanses, greens and grays morph into purples and milky blues.

Other hikers' days ended at the Kinghouse Hotel, but I had another 8 miles to go to Kinlochleven. My feet were on autopilot. My mind slid and shifted. No trees, no closed spaces, no sound except boot crunching gravel. I forgot who I was. My feet thought for me.

At five o'clock, I ascended the dreaded Devil's Staircase and had the entire trail -- and trial -- to myself.

At the summit, I thought of Ian Callaway and Donald Newgreen, the barrister and Pfizer scientist from Kent with whom I had hiked from the beginning. At the Glengoyne distillery on day one, we had downed a dram of whisky at 11:30 a.m. on empty stomachs. By day two, we had already shared many a pint. I knew they would have to ascend the Staircase on day six. Forecast: rain. I wondered what their story would be.

Oh, my fellow travelers! What ever happened to Margaret Tholstrup and Carol Shillito-Clarke, middle-aged women who had already tackled the Incan Trail? The Kiwis Evette and Gareth, the Canadian college student Meghan Kizuik and her friend Erin Knight? I even missed Clive and Jim, those old unstoppable blokes.

Writing this weeks later, I concluded that loneliness is overrated. I did need other people. My mind went back to Chris and Todd, the two Duke students on summer break I overtook toward the end of day four. Lugging massive packs, Todd struggled with a water jug and Chris had (of all burdens) a Greek bouzouki strapped to his back. Red from sunburn and covered in midge bites, they had been camping out for the last week. They looked miserable.

''Thanks, man," said the curly-headed Chris, looking over at me.

''For what?" I asked.

''We were getting tired. But you showing up, you gave us a boost."

Keats was right about Scotland. ''I am more comfortable than I could have imagined in such a place," he wrote on July 18, 1818. ''The people are all very kind."

Our presences dwarfed by Beinn Dorain but encouraged by each other, Chris and Todd and I forsook those false and hurtful divisions of life: age and youth, poverty and riches, solitude and kinship, strength and fatigue. Together, we quickened our pace toward our well-earned bed and tent and pint, all three of us -- or four, if you count Keats.

Contact Ethan Gilsdorf, a freelance writer in Somerville, at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com.