West Highland Way. Shoes or Boots.

[lee14789]

Good Afternoon,

I a looking for a bit of advice on Whw. I have both boots and shoes and was wondering what current conditions are like and if shoes would be ok. Im not starting for 3 weeks and I am looking to wear shoes but just looking for some advice.

Regards

Lee

[mylesmcs]

Hi Lee,

I'm not sure of trial conditions at present but I walked the way last year in early October. Obviously that time of year that was rather a lot of rain and the trail was rather wet.

That said I wore Merrel Moab Ventilators and was very happy. The WHW as I'm sure your aware is a well walked trail and is well maintained. My personal preference and recommendation is to use trail runners. If you’re not keen on the limited support of trail runners I'd recommend going with a shoe such as the Merrel Moab Ventilators or the likes (which it sounds like you.

There are not really any sections of the trail which require stiff ankle support in my opinion.

Please bear in mind that this is only my opinion and that I almost always wear trail runners.

Hope you have a great time. I'll be doing the Rob Roy Way at the same time, might even cross paths ne ar Drymen.

[davekeiller]

Problem is that conditions will change over the next three weeks. It's probably a bit too early to tell, but I suspect that shoes would probably be Ok because it looks like we're going to get some better weather and May is usually a fairly dry month.

[nick70]

Apologies, I feel that I would have to disagree with previous 2 posters. It would definitely be boots all the way for me.

IMO there are many stretches that require stiff ankle support. You are not walking on fresh flat pavements. Almost all of the way it is a cobbled walk, to put it mildly at best. Even wearing boots I have went over on my ankle. I recently done WHW again (Mar/Apr this year) and my paths kept crossing with 3 very younger and fitter guys from Ardrossan. One of them had a section (crossing Rannoch Moor) where he thought trail shoes would be ok and he went badly over on his ankle.

The section north of Inversnaid is particularly brutal and tough and I personally, could not imagine crossing that in trail shoes.

There is also another section, just shy of Crianlarich crossroads, where you are literally just walking through (what seems like a never ending) a section of really bad mud/cow ****/horse ****. Again if you get your footing wrong here just wearing trail shoes then you will most likely suffer some form of ingress.

At end of day it is your decision but my personal preference would always be boots.

Enjoy walk when you do it, you will love it.

[davekeiller]

My post wasn't really intended to give an opinion on the boots v shoes debate from a terrain point of view (that argument is had on these boards often enough), but from a weather conditions point of view.
Weather conditions in the west of Scotland are very changeable (as most of us know from experience), and therefore it's impossible to know what underfoot conditions will be like in three weeks' time. However, it seems like winter is coming to an end and we're getting some drier, warmer weather. That, coupled with the fact that May tends to be one of the driest months and the WHW is generally a fairly well made path, means that it seems likely that it would be dry enough to walk the WHW in shoes rather than boots without having permanently wet feet.

[nick70]

@davekeiller

Apologies, my bad. Thought poster was referring to terrain