Great Glen Way: Atlantic to North Sea in Six Days

Look at a map of Scotland and you will find a straight line running corner to corner across it, as if someone had cut the country with a knife. That line is the Great Glen. You can walk it.

Six days, one valley, lochs strung along its floor like beads. The Great Glen Way follows it from the Atlantic at Fort William to the North Sea at Inverness, and it is the gentlest long-distance walk in the Highlands. Our guide to hiking in Scotland sets it beside the country's other waymarked trails.

Quick facts:

• Where: Fort William to Inverness, through the Great Glen and along Loch Ness, in the Scottish Highlands

• What: a waymarked 125 km (78 mile) trail, opened in 2002 and one of Scotland's Great Trails, walked inn to inn in five to seven days

• How difficult: moderate; four gentle stages, one hard climb and one long final day, no scrambling

• When: April to October, best in May, June and September

The Six Stages, West to East

Most people walk the trail in six days, west to east, and every stage ends in a village with beds. The figures below come from our own routing, which covers about 120 of the trail's 125 kilometres. Watch the ascent as well as the distance. Day five climbs hardest, and day six walks furthest.

Our Great Glen Way trip walks exactly these six stages over eight days, with the 690 metre day placed fifth so it arrives when you are fit rather than fresh. The final day can be shortened by a shuttle we arrange in advance, rather than one you improvise at a bus stop.

What Is a Glen?

A glen is a valley. The word comes from the Gaelic gleann: a narrow valley between hills, usually with a river along the bottom. Scotland has hundreds of them, and almost all of them bend and wander, because a river cut them and rivers never run straight.

The Great Glen is different. On a map it runs ruler straight for about 100 kilometres. Why? It follows a crack in the Earth's crust.

Long ago, the land on either side slid sideways past each other along this line, like two books pushed in opposite directions across a table. The rocks on the two sides still do not match, and that mismatch is how geologists worked out the land had moved.

Later, glaciers ground along the weak line and dug it deeper. When the ice melted, the hollows filled with water: Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness, lined up one after another.

You walk past all three. Small earthquakes are still recorded along the line, rare enough in Britain to be worth knowing about. None is big enough to feel.

How Hard Is the Great Glen Way

Easier than 125 kilometres sounds. Four of the six stages are gentle, and the difficulty sits in two places: the 690 metre climb to Drumnadrochit and the 30 kilometre walk into Inverness. Our routing grades the week fitness 3 of 5 and technical 2 of 5.

The real demand is distance on consecutive days. Stages of 17 to 22 kilometres suit anyone who walks regularly, but six in a row is a different ask from one long Sunday.

The ground helps you. Canal towpath, forestry road and old military road stay firm even after rain, while most Scottish hill paths turn to peat. There is no scrambling, no exposure on the main route, and the waymarking is continuous. Our guide on training for hiking covers what six days back to back require.

Low Route or High Route

Between Invermoriston and Drumnadrochit the trail splits, and it is the only real decision of the week. Take the high route if the sky is clear and your legs feel good. Take the low route if the cloud is down, because the extra climbing buys nothing you can see.

Decide the night before. The Mountain Weather Information Service gives cloud base and wind at height rather than a valley reading. The signed split comes early in the day, when you are still fresh enough to talk yourself into the wrong one.

What the Walking Feels Like

For three days you barely leave the water. The towpath is flat and quiet, and the loudest thing in the morning is a lock gate creaking open while a yacht rises beside you, slower than you walk. You overtake boats. Then they overtake you at lunch.

The glen is a corridor, not a wilderness. A village turns up every 15 to 20 kilometres, the A82 runs the length of the glen, and a bus can rescue a bad day. That changes how a week feels. You stop worrying about getting through and start noticing things.

There is plenty to notice. Red squirrels and pine martens live in the forestry, both far more common here than in most of Britain, and ospreys fish the lochs from about April to August before flying to West Africa.

The place names describe the ground once you know four Gaelic words: loch is a lake, inver a river mouth, drum a ridge, ben a mountain. Drumnadrochit is the ridge by the bridge.

The trade off is honest: you walk beside big mountains rather than over them. Ben Nevis is behind you within an hour, and you never touch a summit.

Why Is There a Canal Beside You?

Ships once had to sail round the north of Scotland to get from one coast to the other. The Caledonian Canal was the shortcut. Thomas Telford started cutting it in 1804, and it opened twelve years late, in October 1822, well over budget.

Only 22 of its 60 miles are dug channel; the rest is the lochs. Steamships soon made the long way round routine, so it never carried the traffic it was built for. What it left you is the towpath.

How Deep Is Loch Ness?

Deeper than most of the North Sea. Loch Ness runs 37 kilometres end to end, with an average depth of 132 metres and a deepest point of 227. You will never see any of that, because peat in the water blocks the light within a few metres of the surface.

The number worth carrying home is volume. At roughly 7.5 cubic kilometres, Loch Ness holds more water than England and Wales combined, counting every lake in both. Loch Lomond is bigger on the map; Loch Ness is bigger underneath.

All that water has a practical side. The loch has never been recorded freezing over, and it softens the air along its shores, which is part of why the eastern half of this walk stays pleasant later into autumn than higher ground nearby.

Do not plan a swim, though. The water is cold all year and the shore is mostly steep and wooded.

When to Walk the Great Glen Way

May, June and September are the best months, inside a season that runs April to October. The glen is low and sheltered, so it stays usable longer than the west coast trails.

Getting There and Where to Sleep

Arrive by train, leave from Inverness. Fort William sits on the West Highland Line, about four hours from Glasgow, and the station is minutes from the trailhead. A sleeper runs overnight from London if you would rather wake up in the Highlands.

Inverness has an airport and a mainline station, about three and a half hours from Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow, which is one more reason to walk west to east.

Buses on the A82 run the length of the glen in about two hours and link every overnight stop. That means any stage can be shortened, skipped or rescued without unpicking the week. The one catch is Sunday, when buses on the A82 and trains on the West Highland Line both run reduced services.

Every night is a hotel, guesthouse or B&B with breakfast, and most will make you a packed lunch. Book the two smallest villages first: Gairlochy and Invermoriston have only a handful of rooms each, and when they fill there is no second option within walking distance.

Accommodation along the glen runs roughly Easter to October, and six months ahead is normal for a July walk. Beds are also most of what the week costs. The walking itself is free: no permit, no access fee and no national park charge, because Scotland's right of responsible access covers the whole corridor.

Know Before You Go

Walk west to east, and pack for ticks and midges. Those are the two decisions people most often get wrong here.

Which Way to Walk

Almost everyone walks from Fort William to Inverness, and for good reasons. The prevailing wind comes from the southwest, so it sits behind you. The stages get harder as you get fitter, from 80 metres of climbing on day one to 690 on day five. And you finish where the trains and planes are.

The one argument for walking the other way is a good one: you would end under Ben Nevis, with the mountains growing ahead of you instead of shrinking behind.

Ticks and Midges

Scotland has two small biters, and the glen has both. Midges are the famous one. From June to August, still and damp summer evenings by the canal and in the forestry are exactly what they like. A head net and repellent make them a nuisance rather than a problem.

Ticks are quieter and matter more. Forestry and bracken are prime habitat along the whole glen, so check yourself every evening and carry a remover, because correct removal matters more than prevention.

What to Carry

The trail is low and well surfaced, so the list is shorter than for the Scottish hills:

• Waterproofs: a jacket and overtrousers, because the glen funnels weather along its length

• Footwear: sturdy trail shoes or light boots; heavy mountain boots are unnecessary

• Water: two litres, because the long stages have gaps of several hours with nothing open

• Lunch: bought the night before, because village shops keep short hours

• Navigation: the trail strip map and a power bank, because signal is patchy along the lochs

• Bites: a midge head net, repellent and a tick remover

The route authority publishes stage maps and diversions on the Highland Council's Great Glen Way site.

Ready to Walk the Great Glen Way?

Our Great Glen Way trip runs April to October: seven nights in 3-star hotels with breakfast, your luggage moved every day, and a digital guidebook with GPS routing. If you would rather we shaped the walk around your own dates, get in touch with our team.