We grow old because we stop hiking.
--Finis Mitchell
Although famed mountaineer Finis Mitchell did suffer a stroke at 74 and a serious knee injury at 77, he continued not just hiking, but serious mountain climbing, as long as physically possible. Death finally claimed him the day before his 94th birthday.
I'll be engaged in a two week celebration, with family and friends, of an advanced birthday of my own -- inshallah, as our Muslim friends would interject -- in Levanto, Italy, in May. And, having suffered neither a stroke nor a serious knee injury to slow me down, I'll be back in Europe in mid-June for a nine-day hike in Scotland -- an unguided hike with pre-booked overnight stops at bed and breakfasts.
Not mountaineering, granted, but a hike.
I'll be hiking the West Highland Way -- a 95 mile hike from a north Glasgow suburb north to Fort William. If this itinerary sounds familiar to long-time readers of this blog, it's because I did the same hike in 2011. Of all eight hikes I've done in Britain since 2010, this is the one that I have least hesitation to hike again.
I'll be hiking with my old University of Washington friend Jim and his wife Dorothy, a couple who I joined for hikes of the Great Glen Way in northern Scotland in 2018, and the Cornwall coast last May. The opportunity to hike with them again is one reason for repeating the West Highland Way hike.
The other reason is the beauty and the diversity of that hike. The trail follows the full 24-mile length of Loch Lomond on the less traveled east side, traverses large, isolated, and "bleak" Rannoch Moor, descends to Kingshouse in Glencoe, climbs the well-named Devil's Staircase, and ends up at Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis (which all three of us climbed in 2018).
Dorothy herself was born and reared in a small town near Glasgow, and can be depended on to offer history, facts, and enthusiasm about the areas through which we pass.
I'm looking forward to returning to a favorite hiking route.
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