Ben Nevis is 'grim': here are the mountains in Scotland you should climb instead

Planning to do some walking in Scotland? Ronald Turnbull, author of the Hillwalking Bible, has a few suggestions to get started

The Highlands, as the name suggests, are great for high-level hikes, and I’ll come to those in a moment. A low level walk, however, can sometimes leave you low in spirits with a bog on your boots and spruce prickles down the back of your neck.

For lower walking, then, the best idea will be to go to one of the places with its own network of waymarked walks. Better still if you can get there by bus or train; to walk without having to bring a set of wheels as well. Take Kinlochleven: two miles, or 12, right from the bus stop or the porch of your hostel. Or the ancient pinewoods around Aviemore, at the edge of the Cairngorms, are also fine walking: perhaps even more so when the wind whips the branches, the cloud dashes by a few metres over your head, and real waves lap the shoreline of Loch an Eilein with its island castle.

Short Break: PitlochryPitlochry, in what used to be called Highland Perthshire, isn’t just the Scottish capital of the tartan tearoom. It also has a wide and wooded network of well made paths around Loch Fascally and up the great River Garry to Killiecrankie. Above the town there’s a grand wee hill, Ben Vrackie – 841m being, in the context of Highland Perthshire, a pretty minimal hill. Just upstream at Blair Atholl you can head onto the big, lumpy summits of Atholl. And if at the end of an energetic day you’re feeling just like a nice cup of tea and a bit of shortbread – you’re in the right place for that as well.Getting there Frequent trains and coaches from Edinburgh. The walks are straight from the town, no car needed.What’s there A grand Hydro Hotel, a humble youth hostel, and everything in between. Also distillery, Festival Theatre, and Blair Castle up the river.Getting out Riverside walk to Killiecrankie and back down the other bank.Ben Vrackie (841m), with possible descent to Killiecrankie.Beinn a’ Ghlo and Atholl Munros from Blair Atholl.Rob Roy Way long-distance path to Loch Lomond.

The MunrosThere are 282 hills in Scotland over 3000ft high, or 914.4m. The sport of going up every one of them was invented in 1891. Today, most people going up hills in the Highlands are going up the Munros.The project is persuasive. Almost every one of the 282 is a worthwhile summit (the exceptions might be the A9 hills, the Monadhliath, and Beinn na Lap). Chasing after the whole lot will give a rich and varied experience: the pointy peaks of the west to the great granite plateau of the Cairngorms; the far flung peaks of Sutherland and the boat ride to the Isle of Mull; serious scrambling on Skye, plus the day dangling on the climbing rope at the Inaccessible Pinnacle.

On Not Going up Ben NevisBen Nevis is, for many people, their first Scottish mountain. And it does have one plus point in this respect. If you enjoy Ben Nevis, straight up from sea level at the edge of Fort William – well, every one of the remaining 281 Munro summits is even nicer than that.Ben Nevis by the Pony Path – and even after they’ve renamed it as the Mountain Trail – this is still one of the grimmest things in hillwalking. Up and up, on a line of jammed boulders, for four hours or even five. The magnificent crags to the north, do you see them? You do not. The interestingly varied chalets and caravans of lower Glen Nevis, do you see those? Yes you do, a nice full-on view, all they way until you finally arrive inside the summit cloud and drizzle.But if up is not much fun, just wait till you hit down. Or rather, down hits you, on the toe tips, over 10,000 uncomfy footsteps. The sun goes down, and the shadows gather in the glen, and the lights go out in the bar of the Nevis Inn.Just one consolation. As the busiest hill path in Scotland, it’s a friendly and sociable day out, with plenty of fellow sufferers to share a good moan.

Loch Lomond and the TrossachsWith so much richness on offer, where to start? Surprisingly, this one has a simple answer: Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. At the southern edge of the Highlands, they’re easier to get to: the West Highland Railway and the Citylink coach from Glasgow go right through the middle. There are places to stay, even if the ones on the West Highland Way get booked up through the summer. The national park's 21 Munro summits are craggy and interesting, with just a couple of dull ones to lend weight to the mix. (Which two are those? You’ll find out as you go along.) At the same time none is seriously difficult; the rocky-topped Cobbler is, endearingly, just too low to be a Munro.And to start off, how about the most southerly, and most straightforward, of them all?

A first Munro: Ben LomondBen Lomond is almost on the outskirts of Glasgow – if you happen to be here on a winter’s night, you’ll see the hill lit up in neon orange by the cities of the south. It also has one of Scotland’s most famous songs about it. These two, together, make it a busy hill. Two further factors make it even busier still. Firstly, as big hills go it’s surprisingly easy: a wide, clear path at a fairly gentle angle all the way up. And most important of all, with shapely mountains all around, the great loch all along its foot, and views stretching all the way to Ben Nevis, it really is a very lovely place.Though not, as I said, a place of great solitude.Along the summit ridge there are drops on the right that are exciting or scary, depending on your temperament and tastes. And at the summit itself, there's an option to try out something more adventurous. Or at least to take a peep, down Ben Lomond’s north-west ridge. The path is rather steep and rather rocky, and the ridge sides drop down and down to the moorlands below. But here’s the clever bit: the steepest, rockiest bit is right at the top. So if the top feels okay, you can take it all the way down. And if it doesn’t, you can turn back down the busy main path you came up by.

More MunrosAnd the other 281? They range (pun intended) from the lumpy, rocky, high-rainfall summits of the western Highlands to the rounded, heathery slopes above the Angus Glens. All over the central Highlands, great east-west ridgelines carry four or five or even eight Munro summits: huge, and hugely enjoyable, hill days. Meanwhile the eight peaks that comprise the Black Cuillin of Skye almost all involve rocky scrambling: one of them, Sgurr Dearg, is a proper rock climb.Enough for a lifetime of walking, along the rivers and through the woods, and up the hills in the Highlands.

The Hillwalking Bible Where to go, what to take and how not to get lost by Ronald Turnbull is out now published by Bloomsbury at £22