West Highland way hiking vacation, 8 days

Planet

This self-guided walking vacation along Scotland’s West Highland Way is, by its very nature, slow and sustainable, with guests walking on average 19km or 5-7 hours per day along one of Scotland’s most famous long-distance walking trails. Covering 154km in total over eight days, guests have an opportunity to traverse some of Scotland’s most protected and treasured landscapes including Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, the wilds of Rannoch Moor which is a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and the Glencoe Mountains, protected by National Trust of Scotland.

Although we do have tours during summer months, we also run our trips out of peak season, between March and October, not only to ensure that tourists support the local economy for three seasons of the year, but also to try and encourage walkers to keep their impact as low as possible on the environment during busy times.

With all of our tours, we offer a facility for our guests to travel to and around Scotland using bus and train. When possible, we recommend public transport transfers on our hiking and cycling vacations and, on this tour, guests can start and finish the trip by train in Milngavie and Fort William respectively. Although guests’ luggage is transferred by a local provider on this vacation, the only transport used to get guests from one destination to another is their own feet!

People

The accommodation on this vacation is, for the most part, in small locally-owned hotels and guest houses. Tourism is one of the major sources of income in Scotland, especially in the Highlands. Only breakfast is included on this walking vacation and so we encourage our guests to buy lunches and snacks in local shops, and we will recommend dinner spots en route, or the accommodation provider will also provide dinner if requested. All our accommodations have been carefully selected based on a variety of criteria including their location, warm hospitality, a commitment to locally sourced produce food and to responsible tourism.

As this vacation takes guests into rural areas, this directs tourist spend directly into small, Scottish businesses, a world away from the mass tourism of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. All of our host accommodations provide picnic lunches too, paid for locally, and we work closely with them to avoid single use plastics when packaging them. We always advise our guests to bring their own reusable sealable lunch box, and refillable water bottles of course.

Directing guests to local food in Scotland is important to us, not only so that they have an enjoyable cultural experience, but because they are also supporting the local gastro-economy, which is growing all the time in Scotland. Grace, our tour manager, knows all the best places to find local specialities, the finest local eateries and, of course, pubs in the trip notes. Grace also reminds guests to always practise Leave No Trace throughout their vacation.