Every Saturday morning, a small cluster of people gathers at a car park on the southern shore of Loch Ness. Some have driven forty minutes from Drumnadrochit. One or two have come on the early bus from Inverness city centre. There is usually someone new — someone who replied to a poster in a community hall or found us through a local Facebook group — standing slightly apart, boots still clean, wondering what they have signed up for. By lunchtime, they are rarely standing apart anymore.
That gathering is one of around sixty led outings Cairnvost Howe runs each year. Some follow the lower-level paths of the Great Glen Way, where the terrain is forgiving and the views across the water to the far hills offer a continuous reward for modest effort. Others push higher, into the corries above the glen or along the ridges connecting the Munros that rise above the south-western shore. A handful reach genuine summit days — the kind that take the whole day and leave participants quiet on the drive home, in the best possible way.
What makes our programme different from a hillwalking club is that we do not presuppose experience. Walk leaders are trained not only in navigation and first aid but in the quieter skill of reading a group — knowing when to slow the pace, when a rest is needed before anyone asks for one, when someone who seemed confident at the start is beginning to struggle. That attentiveness is built into every leader training weekend we run, and it shapes the character of every outing.
We also work hard to reach people who would not naturally find their way to a club. Coordinating with community transport schemes and local social prescribers, we run a proportion of our outings specifically for people referred through NHS Highland's social prescribing network — individuals dealing with isolation, anxiety, or the early stages of recovery from illness, for whom an organised group with experienced leaders lowers the barrier to entry considerably.
The routes themselves are drawn from across the region's extraordinary variety. Glen Affric, which several walking writers have called the most beautiful glen in Scotland, features on our calendar at least four times a year at different seasons. The colours alone — the rust and copper of the old Caledonian pines in October, the sudden whiteness of the high tops in March — justify the drive for many participants who have lived within an hour of the glen their entire lives without ever visiting.
For those based in Inverness, the logistics of reaching trailheads can be a genuine obstacle. Many participants do not own a car. We coordinate shared lifts through a volunteer-managed system and designate bus-accessible start points wherever routes allow. It is imperfect — the Highlands' dispersed geography does not yield easily to public transport — but it is a working system, and expanding it is one of our priorities for the coming year.
If you have been thinking about joining a walk but are not sure whether you are fit enough, experienced enough, or simply whether you will know anyone: you do not need prior experience, and you almost certainly will not know anyone at the start. That is entirely fine. The walk is where it begins.