Magic in the Mountains

Google Doc: daily literary with milage, accommodations, meals, and links

Our 2024 honeymoon to Scotland was a once in a life time trip. We were abroad for 14 days and got to see so many breathtaking sites and make countless memories. Because we are thru hikers, we chose to break our trip into two different parts: hiking the West Highland Way and being tourists.

Our first leg of the journey was to walk nearly 100 miles from Milngavie to Fort William along the West Highland Way. This long trail was different from any other trail we’ve done because it was so luxurious and accessible. There are many “walkers”, as they’re called, who hike inn to inn each day rather than camping out at night. Many walkers also opt to partake in a baggage transfer so that they only have to hike with a day pack rather than carrying all their gear. Because this was our honeymoon, Cade and I chose to do a hybrid trip. We slept about half of the nights in our tent, and the other half we stayed in either hostels or bed and breakfasts along the way. We are used to carrying a fully loaded pack, so hiking with all our gear wasn’t an issue.

Another difference about this trial is the fact that walkers don’t have to carry any food! We splurged on this trip and ate virtually every meal at a restaurant or with food we purchased at local stores. This saved us significant pack weight and also helped to make the trip extra memorable. We ate delicious meals and got to experiences Scottish culture because we were constantly interacting with locals. This was definitely more glamorous than eating ramen and tuna!

It’s absolutely possible to hike the WHW and be totally self sufficient- carrying your food to eat at camp and only sleeping in your tent. It’s also possible to sleep in a plush bed each night and eat every meal at a swanky restaurant. Looking back I am glad we straddled the line between the two.

The only caveat with going the fancier route is that it requires A LOT of planning before ever stepping foot in Scotland. Our trip was in May 2024 and I began making reservations in February 2024. At the time I thought this was well in advance, but I quickly learned that many accommodations were already fully booked! There are guide services that can fully book your trip and don’t require any of the leg work of planning, but they are an expensive service and one that we chose to go without. We did all the planning and booking on our own with few hiccups along the way.

The main resources I used for planning was the West Highland Way website and their individual pages on each section of the route. I also read several blog posts from Nancy East about her families’ 2017 hike of the WHW and got inspiration from Youtube vloggers Vanhalla Adventures and Kraig Adams. A former client on a backpacking trip gifted us a copy of the West Highland Way Trailblazer Guidebook which we consulted as well. Once we were on the trail, most of the day to day logistics were managed with the help of FarOut’s WHW map. This is an invaluable app I’ve used on every long trail to see real time where I am on trail, read helpful comments from other backpackers, and gage my distance to waypoints like water sources, campsites, and town.

I complied our reservations into a spreadsheet to keep all the information in one place. I made notes about our reservations, booking numbers, references to emails, communication records, etc. all in this document and printed it out so that I could easily access it once we were on trail. Since we are in the US I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to make reservations via email or just through online bookings sites. The most challenging part was making dinner reservations because some of the restaurants were smaller and didn’t have online booking, but emailing sufficed just fine.

I have condescend my master planning spreadsheet into a Google Doc to aid in any future walker’s planning. If you have questions or are planning to hike the WHW in the future, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Stay tuned for future posts with an itinerary of the second half of our trip: sightseeing.