West Highland Way: A Spur of the Moment Challenge

Distance: 96.5 miles

Elevation gain: about 3,500 meters

Difficulty: Depends on your fitness, how much you’re carrying, and how many days you

Rannuch Moor, which we walked across on day four, was my favorite part of our journey.

do it in. I’m moderately fit (these days I run three days a week, have two one-hour sessions a week of weight training at the gym, and go to two boxing classes a week). I found walking around 30 to 35 kilometers for each of our five days on the Way while carrying a 12kg backpack very challenging but, in the end, doable. I’d recommend training specifically for the walk by doing long hikes while load-carrying several weeks beforehand.

Start: Milngavie, Scotland

End: Fort William, Scotland

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Tom, my personal trainer, asked me sometime in December if my husband Colin and I had plans to do anything interesting over Christmas.

“Yes! We’ve decided to walk the West Highland Way,” I responded enthusiastically.

“Why would anyone do that?” he asked, partially in jest.

“I don’t know. It’s just something to do. It’s just a walk,” I said. “Anyone can walk.” Ha! Little did I know what was to come.

“And whose idea was this?” I’m sure he was expecting the answer to be me. But this time it wasn’t me coming up with the crazy ideas.

“Colin. He asked me towards the end of November if I’d like to walk the West Highland Way over Christmas. I asked him what’s that? He said it was a 96-mile walk over five days. I said, ‘Ok.’”

“Rosie and I never have those kinds of conversations,” Tom joked. Tom, by the way, is a really badass personal trainer. But he likes to make fun of me and all the crazy challenges I keep coming up with for myself.

But that really was how our West Highland Way walk came about. It was a spur of the moment suggestion from my husband at the end of November. I said yes. And that was that.

Had I known what we were up against, I might have put in a bit more training in preparation for it.

Winter mountaineering: A new hobby for the list

Call it hiking, hill walking, or trekking, almost anyone can do it with a bit of fitness and

On top of Stob Dearg in Glencoe, Scotland

some simple gear (hiking boots, gaiters, trekking poles, water proofs, layers, and a backpack). Depending on where you are hiking, you can do it on your own by following a clear trail, hire a guide, or use your navigation skills to get from one place to another. I’ve been doing it for several years now. I’ve done lots of hill walking in the UK, I’ve climbed the mountains of Sinai in Egypt, hiked in America’s Smoky Mountains, climbed and summited Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, walked the full distance of the Inca Trail and did the Santa Cruz trek in Peru, walked between the seaside villages of the Cinque Terre in Italy, and attempted (but failed) to summit Mont Blanc in France and Aconcagua in Argentina.

It was on that last trip that my tent buddy Victoria mentioned an amazing Scottish winter mountaineering course she had taken a few months earlier. I had taken a short course in using crampons several years ago before I climbed Mont Blanc. But I felt maybe it was time to refresh those skills and to get some of the technical skills needed to climb in the UK in winters; something I’ve mostly avoided when there has been snow and ice.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wanted to know if winter mountaineering was for me.

Let’s just say it was EPIC. 

London to Paris Cycle 2013

Part I: The Training

When my husband first told me that he was thinking of getting a few guys from the office together to cycle from London to Paris, my

Andrew, Colin, and Nadia after three days of cycling from London to Paris. We made it!

first thought was, “Who does crazy stuff like that?” The words that came out of my mouth were, “Can I join?”

I hardly had any experience cycling but that was not going to hold me back. I bought a cheap mountain bike in Egypt just before I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2009. I cycled a few times in Cairo as part of my training for the climb. That training consisted of leisurely cycling on flat road for no longer than half an hour at a time. I did not think it was leisurely then, of course. I now know what real training means.

Taming the Intercultural Beast

For years I’ve been telling people that I think intercultural marriages are a huge mistake. Intercultural marriages are doomed, I’d tell them. The differences, especially in the case of an Arab marrying a Western non-Arab, are too large. I’d tell people that no matter how open and liberal we Arabs seem to be in the beginning of a relationship, we always end up reverting to the rural version of ourselves; the farmer in us or the fallah.

I was saying this from experience. I am the product of one of the worst intercultural marriages – and hence one of the ugliest intercultural divorces – of all time. Take my parents’ story and compare it to all others in this world and it will rank at the very top with nightmare. And theirs wasn’t the only one I had witnessed. We were surrounded by intercultural marriages and not a oneI can recall succeeded. So I know what I’m talking about.

And do I take my own valuable advice? No. Life wouldn’t be exciting if I did. I can give out really crappy advice sometimes and if anyone knows that it’s me.

So I recently married a Brit. The real original kind. The kind that’s been British for generations and generations. Not the “I’m British but from Arab origin or I’m British but from Asian origin” kind. No sirree. I am married to a Brit of Scottish origin. The kind that when I stand next to him, my skin appears to be dark brown; me who Egyptians describe as being white and blonde (I’m neither). The kind that speaks like Braveheart. And man oh man, oh man is it sexy! You tell me how I could have resisted a sexy Braveheart accent? Well, I couldn’t! Hot blood runs through my veins just as much as the next woman.

So now, not only am I facing the trials and tribulations of going through marriage numero duo, never an easy task in the best of cases, this second marriage is fraught with the problems that occur when an Arab and a Westerner decide to join forces ’til death do us part. And it certainly may be the death of one or both of us.

Read the rest of this article where it was originally posted at Cairo Scene’s the Scenario.