Читать книгу Not the West Highland Way. Diversions over mountains, smaller hills or high passes for 8 of the WH Way's 9 stages онлайн

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DRYMEN TO ROWARDENNAN

This short stage finishes crossing the Lowland plain and arrives at Loch Lomond. It’s the only section without a mountain alternative – unless we count 361m Conic Hill as a mountain.

Maybe we should. Conic offers a stiff steep climb, a sudden panorama, and a whole lot of rock on top. That stiff, steep climb is, though, a mere 50m above the WH Way path. This is scarcely enough for a subheading and a little blue route box with distances and times. And why should Conic require a little blue route box, when it’s got the huge blue expanse of Loch Lomond?

WH WAY: DRYMEN TO ROWARDENNAN

Distance 24km (15 miles) Approximate time 7hr

Conic Hill from south of Luss

Loch Lomond from Conic Hill

After the rail-and-road travel of the previous section, today starts with something even less exciting: a wood-pulp plantation. Leave Drymen on the main A811 for a path on the left up into Garadhban Forest.

The forest track contours northwest, through a car park and past various side-tracks. Emerge into a patch of clear-fell, and the official Way’s first view of Loch Lomond lies below the brushwood. Here I met two Germans encamped in what had been, before the trees fell, a clearing: a point marked on Harvey’s strip map as a wild campsite. I was pleased to tell them that, since the Land Reform Act of 2003, the whole of Scotland is a wild campsite. For myself, I continued into the darkness to a comfortable heather bed on the slopes of Conic Hill.