Sunday 8 October 2006

Couch 4: WHW Planning

Quiet Sunday planning my forthcoming West Highland Way trek. My first long distance walk. 95 miles. 152km. From Milngavie to Fort William. I don't know why I'm feeling daunted, as I did about 90 miles in 7 days and 7 Munros in the Cairngorms in the Summer, but the journey was broken into two as the heat was overbearing.

95 miles in Autumn. No turning back. No shortcuts. No retreat, no surrender - oops, that's Bruce Springsteen.

Feeding planned stops and junctions into Memory Map, and then export waypoints to my Geko 201 unit. For information, I'm using the Harvey's map, and books:

  • Trailblazer's "West Highland Way" by Charles Loran.
  • Cicerone's "The West Highland Way" by Terry Marsh.
  • "Exploring Scottish Hill Tracks" by Ralph Storer (chapter 1 covers the WHW).

Websites that have been useful:

If I can, I'll try and get up Ben Lomond, and maybe, just maybe, take an extra day at the end and get to the summit of The Ben. Ben Nevis, that is. All depends on what shape I'll be in when I get to the vicinity.

2 comments:

Frank and Sue said...

Not stalking, just commenting. Blown an hour or so of work time and read your posts on the West Highland Way trek. Looks a ripper, interesting mix between "wilderness" and civilisation. Great read thanks AktoMan. Might try to get there one day......
p.s. might make a link back to my blog and make a few comments , reckon it is something my mates might like to read!

AktoMan said...

Bonzer, mate. Sorry, my Australian is as poor as my German.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm just so surprised that parts of Australia/Tasmania look similar to Scotland. I you want some info on the gear, there's some videos in the Southern Upland Way (SUW) strand.

Sadly, there are no subtitles for the hard-of-Scottish