Hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland

     Eight days. Ninety-six miles. By foot, with packs. 

    Over the moors, in the blustery wind and driving rain,

                                                                            photo by Margaret della Santina

beside Loch Lomond for two days (and twice a swim),

                                                                            photo by Margaret della Santina

past crumbling ruins of ancient stone huts and churches,

                                                                                        photo by Diana Coogle

past sheep grazing trail-side and dotting the far hills, up the Devil's Staircase to a grand view of Scottish peaks,

At the top of the Devil's Staircase             photo by a willing hiker

up Conic Hill to a grand view of Loch Lomond, up one hill after another, up and down the old stone military road, on the trail through moors and woods, through the graceful and grand old native oaks,

                                        photo by Margaret della Santina

past waterfalls and waterfalls and waterfalls cascading down rock faces,

                                        photo by Margaret della Santina

past plantations of non-native fir trees waiting to be timbered, past the ugly devastation of clearcuts with their stumps and piles of slash and exposed earth (everywhere else we saw earth only on trails), past purple-blooming heather

                                                                        photo by Margaret della Santina

and yellow fields of buttercups and tall purple foxglove, past green, green, green expanses (grass, heather, ferns), past the highland "coo" (cow) with its shaggy red hair falling over its eyes,

                                                                            photo by Margaret della Santina

past centuries-old rock walls winding across the landscape,

                                                                            photo by Margaret della Santina

under the looming peak of Buachaillie Etive Mór (the Big Shepherd of Etive, "the most iconic and most photographed peak in Scotland"),

                                                                        selfie by Margaret della Santina

 and at last, after the seven or ten or fifteen miles of the day, to whatever lodging we had booked for the night: an 18th-century inn

                                                                        photo by a willing stranger

or a bunkhouse next to a hotel or "the most haunted house in the UK" (Drover's Inn)

The Bar at Drover's Inn                                    photo by Margaret della Santina

or "glamping" in the tube of a "pod,"

                                                                                        photo by Diana Coogle

and, first things first, a beer at the hotel bar

                                                                            photo by Margaret della Santina

or down the street in the oldest consecutively operated pub in Scotland (since 1752)

                                                                                        photo by Diana Coogle

or at the bar of Drover's Inn, where the wait staff wore tee shirts that said, "Voted best pub 1703."

    Margaret della Santina hiked every step with me, even with a bum knee, which she iced every evening when we got to our inn and which didn't keep her from loving every minute of the trail. Because she was walking carefully, when we came to a hill, she would say, "See you at the top," and I would take off at my usual steady pace. At one especially raw-weather moment, as she walked up to me where I waited on a beautiful old stone bridge in the cold wind and driving rain,

                                        photo by Margaret della Santina

she said, gleefully, "This is what we signed up for!" And indeed, yes. It was Scotland, after all.

    On the third day, Margaret studied the map and came up with a plan for changing our itinerary. We could hike as planned to Inversnaid but then taking a ferry across Loch Lomond to Tarbet and a bus from there to our lodging, cutting out seven miles of a planned 15-mile day and adding a lovely ferry ride on the lake.

                                                                            photo by Margaret della Santina

(We made up those miles with extra hiking to our various lodgings to equal the 96 miles of the trail.)

    The end of the West Highland Way is in Fort William, at the Statue of the Man with Sore Feet.

                                                photo by a willing passer-by

(How appropriately depicted!) That night Margaret and I toasted our accomplishment with a glass of Prosecco. Not a small feat, I said as we clinked glasses, for the lame and the old.

                                                                                        selfie by Diana Coogle