Drymen to Balmaha to Rowardennan

May 28-29:  WiFi is pretty much non-existent along the way so far; consequently, the blog posts will be intermittent.  In fact, I am writing these two days in WORD first and will copy them over to the blog website when I can.   [Note: I finally got to attach the following text on Tuesday, May 31st.  Forget photos.] [Note 2, on June 1, I attempted to attach a few photos - nope, it didn't work.] [ One more attempt on June 2.

Saturday we trekked from Drymen to Balmaha, on the southern tip of Loch Lomond, via Conic Hill.  But before we left Drymen, we went to the annual agricultural show that the town was hosting.  We were there early so we saw mostly preparations, except for some cattle and sheep judging.  There were a surprising variety of sheep.  The cattle ranged from shaggy haired and huge horned ones to the more traditional breeds.  We also saw the beginning of a judging for some magnificent Clydesdales. 

Eager to get going on the Way, we walked back to town, picked up the trail, and walked in a circular path to the foot of Conic Hill.  This was our first significant climb of over 900 feet to the top, elevation 1184 feet.  The views were 360 degrees, including the lower portion of Loch Lomond, Ben Lomond to the north, and a view of a series of islands that delineate the fault line between lowland Scotland and highland Scotland.

We picked our way back down to near sea level on a very used but well maintained trail, with many steps, popping us out a ‘car park,’ which the guidebook says is larger than the town of Balmaha.  The car park was full on our arrival around 3 pm.  There is one hotel in town – the Oak Tree Inn.  It has a store, coffee shop, bar, restaurant, 9 rooms in the main building (of which we took 5), and a series of rental cottages.  The place was a mass of people, all of whom were hiking or hanging out.

Our rooms were nice, though some were over the bar (we could hear late night carousing), one by the kitchen (all-night fan noise) and the others over the dining room (presumably quiet).  We had dinner in the restaurant among the hordes.  We are beginning to think the Scots are partyers who enjoy their drink.  After dinner, Betsy and I watched most of a movie on TV – Red 2, and giggled.  It is a fun movie with no deep philosophical meaning.

On Sunday, we walked along the ‘bonnie, bonnie shores of Loch Lomond,’ though there were a number of headlands to get over.  We started the day by taking a 5-minute long ferry ride to the island just opposite Balmaha – Inchcailloch - which is a nature reserve.  We walked around the island visiting the summit, a southern bay (which had a small horde of camping cub scouts), a farmhouse ruin, and a church ruin with graveyard.  As requested, the ferry returned precisely at 11 am to take us back to Balmaha.

We gathered up our packs and set off what we thought would be an easy stroll along the loch side.  Wrong - we had several headlands to climb over, though none were very high, but slightly annoying because it was up, then down, and repeat.  One was described as “stiff.”  There were hordes of other hikers and lots of folks enjoying the sunny weather at the beaches.  The car parks were all full.  This is a Bank Holiday weekend (i.e., 3-day weekend), but I talked with someone who told me that “it’s a British thing and we in Scotland don’t observe it.”

We again arrived at our hotel in Rowardennan around 3 pm, with plenty of time to check-in, recover our luggage, re-hydrate, and clean-up before dinner.  Betsy, Carolyn, Tom and I are sharing the ‘Chalet,’ a 2 bed-room self-catering cottage about 200 feet away from the main building, set  on a rise with  views west to the Loch and the western mountains.  The others are in the hotel’s main building, along with the bar, which has live music tonight.  We may hear about this tomorrow.  The bar was hectic and is located with the restaurant, so instead of going to a sit-down dinner, we arranged for ' take away.'  We all purchased food off the menu at the bar and brought it to the Chalet for a more relaxing dinner.  Note, Ron and Jan got a taxi ride back to Balmaha, since there was no room at the Rowardennan Hotel (they committed to come on this trip after the rest of us, and the hotel was already fully booked).  They will be returning tomorrow morning for a climb up to the top of Ben Lomond.  It is our first ‘rest day’ so we are in the same hotel for another night.