Roger Cox: 'Everybody's looking for a bit of peace and quiet, but in more or less the same places'

Relatively speaking, Scotland is a country of modest dimensions. With a landmass of 78,772 sq km, it's a little bit bigger than Panama, a little bit smaller than the Czech Republic.

Granted, it's no Tuvalu (just 26 sq km) but it's not exactly Russia either (17 million sq km). It's small enough that you feel you should know where everything is, even if you haven't had a chance to visit it all yet, but in reality vast swathes of it remain almost completely unexplored, day after day, month after month, year after year.

You're never going to visit these places, these gaps in the map, and, frankly, neither is anybody else. True, there are thousands of outdoors enthusiasts out there who spend millions of hours each year wandering along remote footpaths and kayaking down obscure waterways, but if you were to trace their movements via satellite on any given weekend, I suspect you would see a fairly repetitive pattern emerge.

Most people live in towns and cities, so on Saturday morning you'd see a mass exodus of cars heading for the Great Outdoors, first filing along the same few arterial A-roads, then radiating out into the countryside along capillary-like lanes.

You'd then see people setting out on foot, making short day trips of a few miles from wherever they'd decided to leave the car, or perhaps slightly longer journeys involving a Saturday night camp.

In any event, the vast majority of these excursions would follow existing trails and footpaths.

Then, on Sunday evening, you'd see the whole process play out in reverse. It's a strange state of affairs, really: everybody's looking for a bit of peace and quiet, but in more or less the same places.

Against this backdrop, a new guide book by Kevin Langan makes a whole lot of sense. Noting the huge volume of hikers tackling the West Highland Way and, increasingly, the Speyside Way, he has set out to create a route that links the two.

The result is The East Highland Way, a 78-mile hike that snakes its way from Fort William to Aviemore, passing through some spectacular and – more to the point – seldom visited scenery.

Highlights include the abandoned crofts of Glen Spean, the remnants of the ancient Caledonian forests of Inshriach and the gigantic freshwater beach at Loch Laggan – and as with the West Highland Way, there are plenty of good places to eat and sleep in between strenuous bouts of yomping.

The book has just been published by Luath – get yourself a copy and leave the weekend crowds behind.

In the past, I have been highly critical of the use of "top ten" lists in newspapers and magazines. I have also used intemperate language with regard to top five lists, top 20 lists, top 50 lists and top 100 lists.

I have accused the people who compile such lists of lazy journalism and, when instructed to compile such lists myself, I have mumbled dark threats under my breath.

I have frequently questioned how such lists can possibly be accurate (as they usually set out to rank things that can't possibly be ranked by any objective measure) and I have also questioned the apparently set-in-stone requirement to stick to round numbers.

Unfortunately, my zero-tolerance stance on such lists means that I can be seen to take no pleasure whatsoever in the fact that Thurso East, the too-good-to-be-true surf spot located just outside Thurso harbour, has recently been named the 80th best wave in the world by Surfer magazine, the self-styled "bible of the sport".

I am unable to revel in the fact that Thurso was the highest ranked wave in the British Isles, narrowly beating Ireland's premier wave, Aileens (ranked number 82), and I am similarly unable to gloat that it beat such world-famous contenders as Anchor Point in Morocco, Chicama in Peru, The Box in Australia and Cortes Bank, a deepwater wave that occasionally breaks waaaaay off the coast of California.

Indeed, given my previous track record on the subject of lists, I can't even smugly point out that this particular list was compiled by professional surfers, surf journalists and surf photographers – people who have sampled waves all over the world and are therefore ideally placed to judge which ones are best.

Nope. I've made my bed and I'm going to lie in it. Top 100 lists? Silly idea. Even when they happen to throw up nice surprises.

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 23 July, 2011