I have walked all the said routes starting with the spey way great glen west high-land way, and the southern up land way, and walking xcountry to reach each one. (portpatric, west to east. Make shure you have the 125,00o maps and a gps would be handy. It is so easy to lose one way in the wood land paths.must study the maps most carefully on this path it is most remote,but has bothys on the way to use.

That is a serious walk!

But I wondered if you had thought of linking them all up?

You can start on the WHW and walk through to Inverness on the Great Glen Way and then link bits of Wades Military Road to Aviemore and then down the Speyside Way
It is possible to walk from Buckie to Coldingham on the east coast and then along the SUW.

It would be an even biggerchallenge! Thee is some amazing and little visited scenery on that east coast

I have done it in easy bits! I don't go for challenges, I just keep walking 'cos I like it

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Austen William Poll and I work as a hydrogeologist for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). I moved to Inverness from Ipswich after falling in love with the Scottish countryside during a walking and skiing holiday. I am a keen and prolific hiker having completed both the West Highland Way and Speyside Way in the last 12 months and having 'bagged', to date, 31 Munros (I plan to do them all over the coming 48 months).

I have joined the LDWA as I wanted to know the opinions and thoughts of the walking community on a hike I am considering undertaking. Next September I plan to undertake all four official Scottish long distance routes consecutively i.e:

The Speyside Way
The Southern Upland Way
The West Highland Way
The Great Glen Way

The initial plan is to walk the Speyside way first travelling south then the Southern Upland way travelling West then the West Highland way North. At this point I feel it would be fitting to climb Ben Nevis which will capture the essence of the trip and then travel North East on Great Glen way finishing in Inverness. I am going to call this hike:

The Highland Upland Glen Side Way

and will refer to it on twitter as:

#TheHUGSway500.

The route including the Ben Nevis accent and decent is 475 miles. Considering inevitable diversions and spurs the trip is likely to be in excess of 500 miles, hence this figure in the name.

I have researched whether anybody has done this before and I have not found any claims or references. Are you aware of to have done this? I plan to do this hike for charity whilst delivering a environmental protection and respect message and depending on whether it, or a similar this has been completed will depend on how how I advertise and 'market' it. Furthermore I plan to extensively document the entire trip blogging, tweeting and digitally mapping the route.

So, what do you think?

In the mean time you can follow me on twitter at the following address: https://twitter.com/AWP_Highlands .My twitter name is AWP_Highlands. I generally tweet of my walks, treks, Munro bags and general environmental stuff weekly with my collected data.

Anyway, thanks again for reading, look forward to hearing from you all!