West Highland Way

The West Highland Way is Scotland's first and most celebrated long-distance trail, running 154km from Milngavie (pronounced 'Mull-guy'), a suburb north of Glasgow, to Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis in the western Highlands. The route is divided into seven standard stages and can be completed in five to eight days depending on fitness and planned daily distances. No permit is required, but accommodation at bothies, bunkhouses, and B&Bs along the route must be booked well in advance, particularly for travel between June and August. The trail is accessible from Glasgow Central by train to Milngavie station, placing the start within 30 minutes of the city centre. The first two days trace the eastern shore of Loch Lomond through ancient oak woodland and the West Loch Lomond Nature Reserve on predominantly flat, well-graded paths. North of Inverarnan the route changes character dramatically. The trail crosses Rannoch Moor, one of Europe's largest remaining blanket bogs, a vast sub-arctic wilderness at 300m elevation with no roads and few landmarks. The crossing of the Devil's Staircase—a 550m pass above Glencoe—is the route's highest point and provides sweeping panoramas across the Black Mount and into the dramatic glen below. The final descent from Kinlochleven to Fort William passes through Nevis Forest into the town. Terrain varies considerably across the full route: compacted earth and forest tracks in the south, narrow rocky lochside paths on the northern Loch Lomond section (which become extremely slippery in wet conditions and require hand-over-hand progress in places), open moorland on Rannoch, and exposed high ridge on the Devil's Staircase. Water is abundant from burns and lochs throughout; treatment is advisable. Luggage transfer services operate between most overnight stops.