Undiscovered Scotland

 

Many books have been written about the West Highland Way. Few are as joyous, or enjoyable, as this one. Hamish Brown has written the account of three lads from a Fife climbing club who walked it at the millennium's end. Hector, Stephen (or "Specky") and Dave are an odd trio: a young doctor, a museum curator and a blacksmith. What they do have in common is a love of the Scottish hills, and it as during a club trip to a bothy near the route of the West Highland Way that the idea is born of walking it. The only time all three could make it was the following July, so despite this not being the best month to walk the Way for a number of reasons (midges being chief amongst them) that is what they did.

The title of the book has an echo of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat", and we suspect this is no coincidence. Our three protagonists are clearly fitter and more experienced than many who walk the West Highland Way, but their hillwalking background tends to make them fairly relaxed about detailed route planning, and as interested in diversions to mountain tops and (especially) pubs as in the precise line of the walk itself. Combine this with the fascinating interplay of three very different characters and the sometimes weird and often wonderful people they encounter, and the result is by turns whimsical, amusing and thought provoking. This is particularly impressive as the author gathered all his material second hand from Hector, Specky and Dave, and because, as he notes in his preface, he's never walked the whole length of the Way himself.

The result is a book which engages you at the beginning, and keeps you engaged and amused all the way through. En route we meet the man with the business suit and briefcase at Milngavie who appears to be walking the Way in this most inappropriate garb; the solo walker on the banks of Loch Lomond intending to walk with his dog to Crianlarich, if only he could find the route; and the blind man walking the Way with his family describing the sights to him as they walked. We also encounter the brother and sister dressed as waiter and waitress tending a dining table above Tyndrum (as a surprise for their parents, walking the Way), a man so boring the three retreat from a youth hostel to avoid his company, and an awful lot of midges...