...Woke up this morning to the roar of an engine! the
local binmen were doing their bit to keep the beautiful shores of loch lomond, er? just that, beautiful!
Emerging from the tent a bit sheepish (we were after all camping on the shoreline sand) we were expecting a browbeating.
However, the night before all the rubbish had been bagged (as is our habit in the wilds) so that saved us the usual lecture of
about where and when you are allowed to camp.
...It was another morning of low lying mist that the sun soon burned away and we got busy packing up the tent and frying the bacon delivered the night before. This was the first time we encountered "the americans" along the way and soon developed a carmaraderie, as you do on a trek like this. Back on the trail which now follows a forestry road along the lochside and skirts the side of Ben Lomond climbing and descending here and there. Now and again there are openings and you can see the loch, but these are few and far between until you reach the next stop at Inversnaid hotel.
...Hot and sunny once again, thank god there was a plentiful supply of fresh water from the burns that run down the side of the mountain,
just the job to help flush out the beer from the night before, it simply evaporated in perspiration along with the customary hangover. Things were
looking up, I could now manage to walk normally as the nike air caressed my feet. A few miles out from rowardennan, on one of the
ascents of the road, the trees part and there is a spectacular view over the loch towards the "Arrochar Alps", "it's get the camera out time" I said.
Not one who likes to stop too much 'Rennie' moaned and groaned about stopping too often and that we had "to get moving", "why? what's the hurry" I said
"forget about doing the trek asap, that's for people with something to prove". As you can see it was worth the stop. We ploughed on as the "way" turned off
into the forest, this got us out of the sun which was starting to roast us nicely!, however the track in the forest quickly became a maze of twisted tree roots.
It was no mean feat getting through that part of the walk, meanwhile the water bottles still continued to get filled and re-filled all the way to the Inversnaid Hotel.
I was looking forward to the Inversnaid Falls at the hotel, I needn't have bothered. When we eventually arrived there their was a trickle of water where there is
usually a torrent, the dry sunny weather put paid to that, ah well you can't have everything I suppose......to be continued