Hiking Scotland’s Rob Roy Way

After being in cities for about 10 days (see our previous post on London, Amsterdam, and Paris), we were ready for some quiet countryside. We started out by taking the train from London to Glasgow via Edinburgh, including a very scenic section on England’s northeast coast; Jennifer actually started that day in Paris with a train through the Channel Tunnel to London. Once we got to Glasgow, we attempted to get an Uber to the small town of Drymen, but it never materialized, so we ended up taking a taxi. In retrospect, we should have looked more carefully into transportation options, because there were closer train stations we could have used, and Glasgow taxis have a mandated 30% surcharge if they go out of the city, but at least we were able to get there.

Drymen is the starting point for hiking the Rob Roy Way, an 80-mile walk through the Scottish Highlands, ending in Pitlochry. We met up with our friends Gwen and John (with whom we walked part of the Rota Vicentina last year in Portugal) at the guest house that was arranged for us by an English company called Contours, who made arrangements for lodging, breakfast, and luggage transfer for us — all we had to do was walk between the towns with a day pack and some snacks, rain gear, and water. We decided on this walk rather than the West Highland Way, which also goes through Drymen, and were quite glad we did — the West Highland Way is quite crowded, by all reports, whereas we only saw a few friendly hikers and cyclists on our route.

We met hikers on the Rob Roy Way who were doing it in 6 or 7 days, but we opted for 8 days of walking with a rest day half-way through, which cut the daily mileage down a bit. The walking was varied! Some of the time we were walking on paved roads or sidewalks; sometimes it was a gravel road, forest path, or on one day, slopping through a bog for about a mile, following well-spaced posts to find the way. Sometimes we were along a river or lake; sometimes in a sheep field; sometimes in a forest or a moor. The weather also varied, from rain to mist to sunshine. We saw a lot of animals — mostly sheep and lambs, but also a few deer, an endangered red squirrel, a few cows and horses, and many birds. Each day we ended in a small hamlet or village and stayed in a bed-and-breakfast or a small inn. The food was very good — we ate snacks for lunch, which we were able to purchase in most towns at small grocery stores or bakeries; the inns provided breakfast, which was uniformly excellent. Some evenings we ate at the inn where we stayed, and others we went to a nearby restaurant. Here are some photos from our walk.

Notes and Useful Apps

• Update: The map has been updated since our original post! I downloaded GPX tracks from the Rob Roy Way guidebook page (under “Bonus Content”; Countours included a copy of the book with our trip), split them up into individual segments using File Welder, uploaded them to this post with my newly fixed Routes plugin (GPX import wasn’t working when we first wrote the post), and then used Routes to lookup the elevations of the imported points so we could have an elevation chart.
• Useful apps: Between the 4 of us, we used three different mapping apps, which were all fine: Open Street Map (OSMAnd specifically), Gaia, and AllTrails. You can download a GPX trace of the route and import it into these apps.
• Official Rob Roy Way site and Walk Highlands Rob Way site both have good route descriptions.
• Equipment: Expect some rain, and either bring rain gear or clothes that will keep you comfortable when you’re wet. We had a lot of misty drizzle, but not many heavy downpours. As far as footwear, the day we left Killin, we walked through a very boggy section of at least a mile, where Jennifer changed into sandals and Gwen and John were very glad for their waterproof hiking boots; Zach changed into dry socks when we were through it. Other than that section, Jennifer and Zach’s trail running shoes were fine, as all the creek crossings had bridges or decent stepping stones and the trail wasn’t too muddy or wet.
• Insects: we had heard horror stories about the Scottish midge, and some days whenever we stopped for a snack, after several minutes the midges would come find us. However, we didn’t get many bites and they didn’t bother us while we were moving. Ticks found both of us at least once. We heard mosquitoes a few times. Jennifer applied insect repellent several times, and the rest of our group not as much, but the insects were really not much of an issue.
• Perfumes: for some unknown reason, we noticed a lot of perfumes, air fresheners, and scented towels and sheets at our overnight stops allong this route. Jennifer found them to be overpowering at times. If you have allergies or chemical sensitivity, you might consider seeking out lodging that doesn’t use these products.

As we write this, we’re taking a train from our endpoint in Pitlochry to Glasgow, where we’ll pick up a rental car for the last days of our UK trip. Stay tuned!