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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After bypassing the summit, the wide WH Way path continues down just to right of Conic’s summit ridge. It is muddy and sometimes on bare conglomerate (or ‘puddingstone’) rock. It passes down leftwards through a grassy col and then into woods. Cross Balmaha car park, whose visitor centre has a sculpture symbolising the Highland Line in just two large stones, one of the Lowland Old Red Sandstone and the other of Highland schist.

From the lane to Balmaha pier, the path climbs over Craigie Fort, a fine viewpoint. And now we’re in the Highlands. Specifically we’re on Loch Lomond side, as rampaged over by Rob Roy Macgregor. But the woodland paths are well laid, the wild wolves extinct. Nothing lurks among the oaks but a sudden glimpse of Loch Lomond; and even the plumpest and most affluent West Highland walker probably won’t be molested by any cattle-reiving bandit. Reiving (Scots): snatching away, thieving, especially of livestock. The victim is ‘bereived’, and may well over the coming winter be dying of hunger.