Cairnvost Howe is a Scottish charity that trains people to navigate the hills with skill and confidence, running community walks, navigation courses, and neighbourhood outreach that make Scotland's wild places genuinely accessible to everyone.
Get in touchOur workEvery hill in Scotland has a story, and every person deserves the chance to discover it. At Cairnvost Howe, we believe that the mountains, glens, and moorlands of this country belong to all of us — not just those lucky enough to grow up with an OS map on the kitchen table or a hillwalking parent to show the way. Since our founding, we have trained thousands of people to read a compass, plan a safe route, and step out onto Scotland's uplands with the knowledge that they can find their way home. We run beginner walks in every season, navigation courses for all abilities, and outreach programmes that visit neighbourhoods where the hills feel distant — not in miles, but in confidence. We are a small charity with a large reach, and everything we do is grounded in the belief that practical skills, good company, and a shared summit can change a person's relationship with the outdoors for life.
Our map-and-compass courses run year-round and are designed for complete beginners as well as those brushing up rusty skills. Every course is led by Mountain Training-qualified instructors who have walked every corner of Scotland.
We lead over 180 group walks every year, from gentle low-level introductions on local paths to full-day hill walks above 900 metres. Every walk is free or heavily subsidised, and no one is ever left at the back.
We bring our training directly into communities that face real barriers to outdoor access — partnering with housing associations, community centres, NHS social prescribing networks, and schools to reach people who have never thought of themselves as hillwalkers.
Cairnvost Howe exists to make Scotland's hills genuinely accessible to everyone — not as an aspiration, but as a daily practice. We train people to navigate safely using map, compass, and sound judgement; we lead free and subsidised community walks throughout the year; and we bring our outreach directly to the neighbourhoods where the hills feel most out of reach. We believe that the skills and confidence to walk Scotland's uplands should not be determined by background, income, or prior exposure to the outdoors, and we work to close that gap wherever we find it. Our mission is not about numbers on a spreadsheet — it is about the person who, for the first time, reads a contour line correctly, finds a summit cairn in low cloud, and knows without any doubt that they can trust themselves on a hillside.
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