![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/sorefeet1.jpg\" "\\"sorefeet\\"")
The Sore Feet statue at the end of the West Highland Way<\/p><\/div>A diversion on the West Highland Way<\/a> is currently in place to allow work to clear storm damaged trees. The affected route is in Garadhban Forest just a short way out of Drymen on the Drymen to Rowardennan<\/a> section of the popular long distance walk. A signed diversion is in place and work may take up to a year to complete.<\/p>\n Forestry Commission Scotland is urging local people and visitors to respect any signage they encounter during their visit, which as well as advising of diversions, aims to keep people safe and warn them of a significant public safety risk.<\/p>\n Liz Shortall, for the Commission\u2019s team in Cowal & Trossachs, said: \u201cThe storms earlier in the year have left us with thousands of cubic meters of timber that needs to be cleared – and we are only part way through the process.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve managed to clear some of the fallen trees along a diversion route that takes West Highland Way walkers south of the forest and around the danger area within the forest. Over the next few weeks we\u2019ll clear the fallen trees from woodland south of the official route before tackling the storm damage north of the route.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a long haul – we expect to have the clear up completed by Spring 2013 \u2013 but in the meantime we\u2019ll do our utmost to keep access open.\u201d<\/p>\n A map of the diversion can be found on the FCS website<\/a> with the West Highland Way diversion marked in red. Local users and horse-riders can use the blue route through the forest or, as an alternative, horse riders can also use high Corrie from Old Drymen Road until thinning operations take place in Autumn 2012<\/p>\n Liz warned that visitors should follow the safety signage because ignoring it could potentially be life threatening: \u201cThere will be heavy machinery in use on the site and machine operators may not always be able to see or hear people approaching or passing a site. They have even less chance of seeing dogs that are running free.<\/p>\n \u201cTrack and road conditions may be hazardous \u2013 and some of the storm damaged trees could be unstable, and come down at any minute, and you\u2019d be surprised at how little time there is to get out of the way of tree that is coming down.\u201d<\/p>\n A full route description including free OS mapping of the West Highland Way<\/a> can be found on Walkhighlands. A note of the diversion is also included in the relevant section.<\/p>\n Recent bad weather has caused some delays to work to replace a culvert in Glen Falloch and the temporary bridge is still in place. Walkers are advised that they may be small delays here if contractors need to use the bridge or remove debris from the site. Walkers are also being warned that the area immediately north of Beinglas Farm has suffered some problems from excessive rainfall and although the route is passable, care is needed in places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A diversion on the West Highland Way is currently in place to allow work to clear storm damaged trees. The affected route is in Garadhban Forest just a short way out of Drymen on the Drymen to Rowardennan section of the popular long distance walk. A signed diversion is in place and work may take up to a year to complete. Forestry Commission Scotland is urging local people and visitors to respect any signage they encounter during their visit, which as well as advising of diversions, aims to keep people safe and warn them of a significant public safety risk.…<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-access-issues","category-walking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7333"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24079,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333\/revisions\/24079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}