Resupply planning gets a fraction of the attention in UK long-distance hiking that it gets on the big US trails, where entire community-maintained databases exist for town stops and mail drops. That’s partly because UK trails vary so much in what they actually demand, some genuinely need almost no planning, others need it treated as seriously as the walking itself.
The easy end: trails with daily access
The West Highland Way is close to the straightforward end of the spectrum. Towns or villages show up most days, so resupply barely needs more planning than carrying a day or two of buffer food in case a shop’s shut when you arrive. This is the trail where over planning resupply is more likely to slow you down with excess weight than under-planning is to leave you short.
The middle ground: frequent beds, sparser shops
The Pennine Way sits in a trickier middle ground. Accommodation is generally easy, a B&B most nights along most of the route, but food resupply doesn’t track accommodation availability the same way. The North Pennines and Cheviots sections specifically have real gaps between shops, and this is where planning actually matters: know where the next real resupply point is before you leave the last one, rather than assuming a bed for the night also means a shop nearby.
The remote end: plan like it’s genuinely off-grid, because parts of it are The Cape Wrath Trail is a different category entirely. It’s unmarked in places, with no single defined route, crossing some of the emptiest terrain in western Europe.
Resupply points here aren’t just spread out, some of them close without notice, and the honest list of places to do a proper grocery resupply comes down to a handful of village shops plus a few post-friendly hotels and B&Bs willing to hold a parcel.
Ullapool, roughly at the trail’s halfway point, is the only realistic spot for a full resupply. Outside of that, you’re carrying several days of food at a stretch and planning around genuinely off-grid sections, not just quiet ones.
A detail that catches people out
Rural UK shop hours aren’t always what hikers coming from trail towns elsewhere expect. Early closing days and Sunday closures are still genuinely common in smaller villages, and turning up on the wrong afternoon can mean a locked door rather than a resupply. Checking opening hours in advance, not just whether a shop exists, is part of the planning on any route that isn’t the easy end of the spectrum.
A few principles that hold across all three
Always carry more buffer food than the plan technically requires, shops close, routes get rerouted around weather, and a spare day of food costs very little compared to what running short costs. On the more remote routes, post-restante parcels to hotels or B&Bs along the way are a genuine, well-used option, worth arranging ahead rather than assuming you’ll figure it out en route.
The takeaway
Not every UK long-distance trail asks the same thing of your resupply planning. Know which end of the spectrum your route sits on, the West Highland Way’s daily access, the Pennine Way’s frequent beds but real shop gaps, or the Cape Wrath Trail’s genuinely remote stretches, before you plan how much food to start with.
Over and Out