the loch – 30 sep, 2018
Day 51 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Drymen to Rowardennan
Distance: 20km
Cumulative distance: 1292km
We ended up at the Clachan in Drymen last night which claims to be the oldest pub in all of Scotland. While I’m sure that would be disputed by other ancient watering holes across the country, I can factually report that the atmosphere was convivial and the meals hearty. It was a Sunday night and full of folk feeling pretty sprightly after their first day of walking on the West Highland Way. Drymen was an interesting little town with a handful of pubs and a little village square. It was to here Billy Connolly moved from Glasgow about 50 years ago to escape the legion of fans who had discovered where he lived in the big city. Drymen isn’t actually on the West Highland Way, but it’s a convenient little detour taken by a lot of walkers at the end of their first day.
We took the Rob Roy Way out of town and soon reconnected with the main trail, walking through a dark, coniferous wood which eventually opened up and offered a first superb view of Loch Lomond. This is another one of Scotland’s treasures, and possibly the world’s second most famous loch behind Loch Ness. And while it doesn’t boast an elusive serpentine monster, it can lay claim to the largest surface area of an inland body of water on the island of Great Britain. It’s also its second most voluminous, behind only Loch Ness. This is a particularly touristy little corner of Scotland over the summer, but most of the traffic is on its western shore which is closely followed by the A82. Fortunately the West Highland Way takes hikers up the Loch’s eastern banks which offers plenty more protection from the day trippers and selfie stickers. We were close to those eastern shores, but there was the rather hefty obstacle of Conic Hill standing in our path. Our view of the Loch receded as the hill expanded with every step. We left the forest behind, and crept closer and closer as smaller bald hills began to rise around us. After reeling in a lovely group of about 15 middle-aged to elderly walking enthusiasts, we began the ascent.
I’d been looking forward to this one after a couple of fairly unchallenging days of walking – the 25 or so kilometres into Glasgow and then yesterday’s stroll from the hostel to Drymen. And despite what people had told us, it wasn’t all that bad. The path was wide and firm for the most part, and it actually skirted around the peak. Lemon and I both made pretty good time getting up the steepest sections, and decided we might as well take the little side trip right up to the top for the best view of the Loch. It was a bit muddier along this stretch but we found a passage to the top under the lightest mist of drizzle. From there we could see in every direction – back to the yellow hills behind us, out to the west beyond Loch Lomond, and then along the southern length of the Loch itself. Ben Lomond stands guard midway along Loch Lomond on its eastern side, but there was some low cloud around so we couldn’t really make out its 974m tall frame.
I introduced Lemon to my ‘never backtrack’ rule from the top of Conic Hill, which meant carefully navigating our way down a very steep and rocky section of a rarely trodden slope. There were slippery sections again, and Lemon’s sneakers were made to work incredibly hard to keep the rest of him upright. I picked out a sketchy trail which took us below the rocky section and then eventually back to the path, and I’m happy to report that Lemon also managed to survive the slightly hairy extraction from the hill’s peak. From there it was a pretty solid downhill descent through a little forest and into Balmaha where we stopped for an affogato and to rest our screaming knees.
Coming out of Balmaha we were presented with an unexpected hill which rose sharply before taking us back to the banks of Loch Lomond where we stopped for about half an hour to have some lunch and skim a few rocks. It’s not every day you get to skim rocks from the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond. With a couple of hours ahead of us we resumed walking as I whistled the Loch Lomond song as we slowly followed its eastern edge, up and down the occasional hill. The Loch is widest at its base, and slowly but surely narrows as you progress further north. Views out to its western shore were plentiful and delightful, and for long stretches it felt like we had the trail to ourselves despite the amount of foot traffic we’d encountered along the way. For the last half an hour or so Lemon and I tried speaking to each other in Spanish to prepare him for his upcoming trip to Spain. I’m sure I was more of a hindrance than a help in any event. We eventually hauled ourselves into the Rowardennan Youth Hostel before dumping our gear and heading back down the road about 800m to the pub where the food was delicious once again. Then we clawed our way back to the youth hostel in pitch dark before grabbing a couple of beers from behind the counter and playing a game of chess. Which I won.
