Scotland 2025
October 3-19, 2025

Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday

Wednesday – Fort William (Ben Nevis)
14.5 miles / 23 km

The room was more comfortable than I expected, although I would have appreciated my eye mask due to the headlights of passing cars. This, however, was easily corrected on our second night by simply closing the curtains. Work smarter, not harder!

As Gogs served us breakfast, I made a joke that we had hiked the entire length of the West Highland Way and hadn’t seen a single Highland cow. It was mostly a joke, since I’ve seen them before, but I also knew that Petra was a bit disappointed in not seeing one yet. Gogs, ever wanting to please, immediately said that he knew where there were some cows, and that we should join him when he dropped off Dan that morning, and he’d take us on a hunt for cute cows. Awesome!

We jumped into Gogs’ car and he made quick work of getting Dan to the parking lot and the start of the walk to the top. “The Internet” estimates that your average time to walk to the top and back down again anywhere from 6-8 hours, so we knew that we had plenty of time before he would be back. Gogs then took us down a lovely valley with the morning light streaming through a light mist. He pulled into a gravel drive where we saw a couple of cows (in the distance), he made a quick stop at the side of the road where two cows were grazing (not too far away this time), then took us further down the road where we saw a lot of cows in a field (again, “in the distance”), and then – finally – we ended up at the end of the valley and a beautiful waterfall. Even though I had just walked for eight days through the countryside, just seeing this new area made me wish that I could stay longer and do some more walking.

Happy with our cow sightings, Gogs brought us back to the guest house and Petra and walked around town and made a little lunch stop and souvenir shopping. There were a lot of good shops in town, including many independent stores with unique offerings. We also went to the Fort William Museum and enjoyed learning about the history of the area and watched an entertaining movie about the Commando training in WW2. The museum was free but it was so good, I made sure to stop by later and give them a donation.

I wanted to go back to the room so that when Dan finally returned from Ben Nevis, someone was there to let him into the room. I was sitting out front in the sunshine when Gogs joined me. I said that I was waiting for Dan to come back, as I had just gotten a message that he was going to wait for a taxi for the ride home. “TAXI!?!?” Gogs practically yelled. “You tell him to wait right where he is – I’m coming to get him!” and with that, Gogs jumped into his car and sped off down the road.

Dan’s pace had been much faster than expected, having reached the top and returned back in 4 hours 45 minutes. Even Gogs was impressed. Once Dan was back and had taken a quick break, we all walked back into town looking at the shops again and finding a good dinner (another Gogs recommendation). The day was beautiful and we took advantage of the blue skies to walk to the fort that Fort William is known for. There wasn’t much left of the fort, so we ended up returning to our room. Now that our hike was over, it was time to reorganize our belongings into “hiking” and “non-hiking” categories.

We spent our last evening at yet another highly recommended restaurant and enjoyed the idea of sitting on a train for a few hours tomorrow, effortlessly watching the scenery roll past the windows.

Edinburgh

Trip people :
Seattle guy
Young German couple (Anne)
Lorraine (the slow lady)
Dutch couple (Mitch and Marji)
American brothers (Mark & Larry)