Let Me Tell You About West Highland Way

The West Highland Way has that rare gift of making you feel both tested and blessed. There are long stretches where the feet complain, the weather changes its mind, and the pack feels heavier than it did in the morning. But then comes a view across a loch, a shaft of light on the hills, the smell of pine after rain, or the sudden companionship of a fellow walker, and something in the soul rises again. The body may be tired, but the heart is mysteriously enlarged.

One of the joys of such walking is the people you meet along the way. On the West Highland Way, as on the great trails of the world, strangers become companions for a few minutes, a few miles, or sometimes much longer. You meet people from different countries, cultures, languages, and stories, all drawn by the same desire to be outside, to breathe, to see, to keep going. There is something deeply human about that. A path can become a small meeting place for the nations. Boots muddy, faces weathered, accents varied, but the same shared delight in the hills, the forests, the coastlines, and the open sky.

These days, many of the programmes I watch are hiking-in-nature videos. Speaking entirely for myself, I find them deeply therapeutic. That led me to wonder whether there was any evidence of a secondary therapeutic lift from watching others walk the great trails of the world. And, sure enough, there seems to be good evidence that watching nature videos — including hiking through natural landscapes — can bring real benefits.

Research in psychology and neuroscience has suggested that even virtual exposure to nature can reduce stress and anxiety, lift mood, support attention, and calm the body. Studies have found that watching nature scenes can lower stress hormones, improve emotional wellbeing, reduce heart rate and blood pressure, and awaken feelings of gratitude, connectedness, and happiness. But remember, there is human nature there. I have met many wonderful people on these trails I still hold close to my heart. Also, I have met people and wished we had exchanged emails and later regretted not doing so. But, as the expression goes, the owl of Minerva flies at dusk.  Of course, watching a mountain path on a screen is not the same as feeling the stones under your own boots or the rain on your face. But it is not nothing either.

Perhaps that is why these videos help me. They remind me of places I have walked, places I still hope to walk, and places I may now only visit through the eyes and footsteps of others. They allow me to travel at the pace of a human being rather than the pace of a machine. They bring me, in some small way, back into the healing company of natural creation.

And maybe that is part of the gift. Even when illness narrows the road, beauty still finds ways of reaching us. Sometimes it comes through a Scottish spring morning. Sometimes through a Norwegian railway line. Sometimes through memories of the West Highland Way, where the path bends north, the hills open, and people from all over the world walk together beneath the same generous sky.

The body may have its limits. But wonder, thankfully, can still travel.