Anyone ridden the West Highland Way ?

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Some of the youngsters in the office are trying to rope us oldies into a charity riding of the WHW in April, they plan on completing in over 2 days with an overnight camp. Does anyone here have experience of riding it, how hard an undertaking is this going to be ? Especially so early in the year ?
 

Fubar

Guru
Some of the youngsters in the office are trying to rope us oldies into a charity riding of the WHW in April, they plan on completing in over 2 days with an overnight camp. Does anyone here have experience of riding it, how hard an undertaking is this going to be ? Especially so early in the year ?

I've no experience of it but I imagine it's quite rough ground in places and suitable for a MTB only - @Harry_Palmer79 has walked it from memory, perhaps can advise on the suitability of cycling it...
 
I have walked it . . . barefoot most of the way . . . so I am something of an authority on the surfaces :-)

They vary wildly from suburban style paths to squishy mountain turf, taking in loose shale rocks, beaches, and the shore of Loch Lomond along the way. Do not even think about the shore of Loch Lomond. That would be most of the day carrying your bike over continuous boulder-fields and ankle-breaking tree roots. Riding along the bottom of the lake with a snorkel would actually be easier. There are also some very awkward crawls under railway lines etc further towards the north.

Also, given the soft, squishy and wild nature of some of the terrain, I would be embarrassed at the amount of erosion a bike would cause.

Check out the WHW website for advice. Bits of it certainly are cycle able, but personally I would feel a bit anti-social cycling the whole thing. As I was ascending the Devil's staircase out of Glencoe a couple of mountain bikers came through. Looking down the mountain, I could clearly see that their passage meant that about fifty people strung out over two miles or so had to step off the narrow track to let them through. This is one of the most popular walking routes in the world, walkers come from all over the planet to do it, and 'traffic' can be quite heavy.
 

Dave7

Legendary Member
Location
Cheshire
I looked at some information on it this year.........apparently there are some VERY hairy sections which are not suitable for older/unfit persons.
I stayed in a hotel adjacent to a section of it (a place called Tyndrum) and walked a very small section.......enough to tell me that I couldn't do it.
 
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