Timing and Weather

Basic facts
I started on the 12th August at Wallsend (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), reached Cape Wrath on the 12th October and walked out on the 13th to Balchrick.

Having only done this once I can’t really comment about other seasons. However the benefits of this season include:

• the beginning of the Autumn (Fall) colours
• the bellowing of the Stags
• the scarcity of midges

I’m fairly confident that the trail would be pretty uncrowded most of the year. Perhaps a few bothies might fill up at certain holiday seasons.

The range of temperatures was between about 27C max and 7C min.

Weather conditions
Doubtless the weather will vary a lot from year to year. I would say that I had generally very fine weather, and (this bears repeating) very few midges. However I did experience a few storms, one day of very heavy rainfall, and many days with a mix of sun and rain. Happily there was much less wind than in Iceland.

By far the worst weather conditions of the entire trail were encountered on the three day Pennine Way section. This was due to the remains of a big hurricane from the Gulf of Mexico. The first day in Scotland was also extremely windy. I was very nearly blown over; the flex on my two poles was impressive. 

I had anticipated wild and difficult weather in the Cape Wrath region, but its name belied its nature in this instance. Also from what I have read the name in fact derives from the Norse for “Turn Left Here” rather than being a comment on the climate.

Some lessons
I carried a lightweight 3-season tent. It was not designed for camping in gale-force winds. So, as in Iceland, I had to exercise some care when choosing a camping spot. Only on one night, when I camped quite late, was I really troubled by wind. On the other occasions I was either in a bothy (once in a hostel) or had taken the trouble to be well protected by trees or the lie of the land.

During the one day of massive rain I only walked two hours to the next bothy and then decided to call it a day. This was wise. However I did have the luxury of walking without a fixed timetable or needing to rendezvous with another party. And one of the things that most impressed me that day was the speed at which the nearby river rose from a tranquil stream over some small waterfalls to a raging mass of white water sloping downhill without interruption.

Once again I was very satisfied with and grateful for my rain gear and indeed my clothing in general. There is perhaps a reason that the trail is sponsored by Goretex and not by "Sun hats are Us". Only on a few hot days near the beginning was I obliged to remove wet clothing at the end of a day. Otherwise even on a really wet day my base merino layers stayed dry (or dry enough) so that a short while in a tent or bothy was enough for my body heat to make them completely dry. This of course had the great advantage that the following morning I never had to put on anything that was wet apart from socks.

At this relatively high latitude the UV can be strong in summer, so a good cap or hat (and sunscreen) is pretty necessary unless you’ve got hair to do this job for you.
Barring a decade-long drought (somewhat unlikely) the terrain underfoot is often going to be very wet irrespective of the weather. I’ll discuss footwear elsewhere, but you can expect wet feet.

Rivers in spate
The critical element in the weather is the possibility of encountering rivers in spate which you need to cross but cannot. 

One of the things I would have liked to see in the Section Summary is a column with a weather symbol. This would indicate to what extent that section is particularly susceptible to weather difficulties: Winds, High Tides, Rain (river crossings and slippery terrain), lightening etc. It would be handy to know how many crossings (at at which kilometre mark they come) there are in a section. A list might also give an idea of the time that they take to go down after last rainfall. In the absence of that the best bet is to search the notes (that’s why I have them on Kindle) for the word “spate”. 

This problem is really restricted to a few sections in the last couple of weeks. In particular the last day up to Cape Wrath has at least two rivers that would be impassible after some heavy rain and arguably two others which I’d certainly give a deal of thought to before attempting a crossing.