Explore the Best Walks in Scotland
Love walking? The fresh air, exercise, space, sense of freedom. Do you enjoy the sense of purpose and achievement? Where do you go? Let us suggest some of the Best Walks in Scotland as the perfect option!
As you start to consider which are the best walks in Scotland to do, the long-distance option pops up on your search engine, along with the West Highland Way. This is probably the most popular walk in Scotland, with approx. 35,000 people in an average year! Maybe this is too popular for you, so you delve further, and begin to realise that there is a whole web of different long and short distance walks that spread out across Scotland, offering opportunities to explore more of the wilds, and not so wilds of this beautiful country.
Another Way – The Rob Roy Way
The ever popular West Highland Way starts in Milngavie, just north of Glasgow, and journeys 12 miles (20kms) north to Drymen, here in Dryman the option to take another of the Best Walks in Scotland – The Rob Roy Way (a new walk for Maximum Adventure in 2023) presents itself. This trail takes you from Drymen, passing through villages and small towns, enjoying the vistas across at least 4 lochs including the 15 mile long Loch Tay, which starts near the village of Killin with the impressive Falls of Dochart. Forests and Glens, rivers and moors are your constant companions as you journey the 128km to the town of Pitlochry, set in one of the most beautiful valleys in the Central Highlands.
Already Walked the West Highland Way?
Maybe you completed the West Highland Way a year or so ago and are set for the next challenge in your Scottish odyssey.
Having made it to Fort William at the end of the West Highland Way, you can venture onto the Great Glen Way, another of the greatest walks in Scotland. The Great Glen Way covers 74 miles (120km) of Scottish Highlands, starting (or ending) in Fort William, home to Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. Stretching from coast to coast across the Highlands, this magnificent route passes through some of the most stunning scenery, including Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness. You will make your way along the towpath of the Caledonian Canal, built by Thomas Telford before finishing in Inverness, the capital of the Highlands.
Are you starting to see that Scotland is just there crying out to be explored?
What to do next?
How about the John O’Groats Trail (a new walk for Maximum Adventure in 2023). Having arrived in Inverness, let’s go north to John O’Groats, ‘the end of the road’, a 147-mile (235km) route that takes you along unprotected cliff edges, over tussocky ground, across boggy terrain, the occasional small tributary to navigate, shorelines to walk and, some tarmacked back lanes – an experienced walkers paradise.
Perhaps you are a keen coast to coast walker and have done Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and wonder if Scotland has anything similar. The answer is yes!
The Southern Upland Way
Another of the best walks in Scotland is the Southern Upland Way, an amazing 15-day, 215 miles (347km) coast to coast walk. It starts (or ends) in Portpatrick on the west coast, taking you across some of the most varied and at times, challenging terrain from loch side to sea cliffs, and open moorland with forest trails to drover’s ways to Cockburnspath on the east coast. You will experience the rolling hills with the occasional fell, offering some breath-taking views – worth the climb! A great achievement when the walk is completed.
St Cuthberts Way
In the Border town of Melrose a number of Scotland’s paths converge before becoming The St Cuthbert’s Way, a path of pilgrimage following in the footsteps of St Cuthbert, a 7th Century saint, before finishing in Berwick upon Tweed on the Northumberland coast via the mysterious tidal island Lindisfarne. There is a variety of scenery, changing with the seasons and lots of breath-taking views.
The Borders Abbeys Way
With the historical and cultural stories to learn about as you go, it becomes more than a traditional pilgrimage route, the Borders Abbeys Way, a walk of historical discovery with its gentle, wooded landscape rising to rounded hills, showing nothing of the setting for its violent past. The walk offers the peaceful countryside interspersed with historic towns bringing you the stories of conflict from the mid-12th to early 17th centuries. Sir Walter Scott made the area famous, by being inspired by the countryside and people, or a continuation of the Southern Upland Way.
Scotland offers so much to see and do and experience – what will be your next walk?
If you would like to talk to our us about your next adventure, we would love to hear from you!
Get in touch with the team here
