Calum Maclean and Jenny Graham had grown tired of several daylong hikes across Alpine ridges, and were in search of genuine novelty. They were surprised to find it a little closer to home: a trek across the heather-covered hills of the Cairngorms, but in an entirely straight line.
On Monday night, the adventurers became the first people to walk the longest straight line in the UK without crossing a paved road, after spending four days crossing 78.55km (48.8 miles) from the Pass of Drumochter to Corgarff in north Scotland.
They’re not the first to attempt the challenge, and they don’t expect to be the last. The adventurers chose the route after reading an Ordnance Survey blogpost that identified it as the UK’s longest linear walk between roads.
The post generated considerable interest and excitement among a growing community of traditional hikers and fans of “straight-line mission” videos on YouTube, some of whom have already approached the pair asking for advice on how to repeat the journey.
“For me, it was about the simplicity of it,” said Graham, 41. “It was about exploring in a place I know so well, finding routes and gullies which we would never have gone down. I thought it was a great idea.”
Graham’s curiosity was initially piqued after meeting people who had attempted the route but failed due to adverse weather conditions.
She jumped at the chance to attempt the challenge herself when Maclean invited her to accompany him after he was inspired by watching straight-line mission videos by YouTuber Tom Davies, known as Geowizard.
Davies, who has 988,000 subscribers to his channel, attempted to cross Scotland in a straight line last year, but had to cut his journey short after a run-in with the police.
Like Maclean and Graham, he considers straight-line missions one of the few experiences of genuine adventure available to budding explorers in a world where every corner is mapped.
While Davies’s straight-line missions often stretch through urban areas and involve clambering over factory fences or crossing dual carriageways, Maclean was interested in the OS route because it is through the beautiful Scottish countryside with which he is familiar. In addition to the film-makers who accompanied the pair for part of the journey, they encountered just three other people in the remote terrain.
Although the duo credit their considerable hiking experience with enabling them to complete the route, Maclean, 32, expects other explorers to follow in their footsteps.
“I can see it growing in popularity because of the simplicity of it, and the fact that technology can make it easier by using GPS or plotting a line on an OS map on your phone,” he said.
But he added that this particular straight-line mission may not take off more widely: “It’s not the most fun route with all the heather and the constant uphills and downhills.”
The OS has also plotted two other straight-line walks: the longest in Wales, which runs south of the Cambrian mountains over 22.2km, and a 29.8km-hike in England, through the North Pennines to the east of the Lake District.
The hikers used walking poles to help them wade through waist-high heather, walking carefully to avoid falling in holes, or tumbling down steep descents, and making slow progress through peat hags.
Maclean says he enjoyed “about half of it altogether”, though the pair felt too exhausted and hungry at the end of a “gruelling” journey to truly celebrate it.
Graham thinks that the navigation challenge of sticking to the straight line is one of the most compelling aspects of the missions. “It was 13 hours of utter concentration [every day], that focus of staying on the line and not wavering from it, it became quite addictive,” she said.
Although the adventurers are still recovering from their arduous journey, which the OS warned at the time of devising the route involved “several scrambles” and that it “wouldn’t recommend anyone do it”, the pair’s initial promises to never attempt so gruelling an odyssey again are already fading from memory.
“I don’t want to say I’ll do another one, but then I find myself drifting off and thinking ‘wouldn’t it be cool to do a triathlon in a straight line,’” said Graham. “These things get into your head.”
