All I knew of this song was 'I'll take the high road and you'll take the low road and I'll get to Scotland before you...' But apparently it goes on "but me and my true love will never meet again on the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond". That part however is obviously not true since my true love (my friend Jess... see: Danish Adventures) and I met there. Actually, we travelled there together, and it took us about six hours.

A while back, Jess showed me this list of things she wanted to do. It was written in some very pretty coloured pencils. She wanted to hike, and camp, and be one with nature. I wanted to come along. So (since Jess is the ideas woman and I'm the practicalities) I booked us a hostel and a taxi and looked up some train times for a couple of days during our Spring Vacation when I miraculously wasn't working. We packed up our camping rucksacks (looking pretty legit) and set out from Leuchars. Two trains to Glasgow, two buses to Aberfoyle and then a "DRT Bus" (Demand Responsive Transport, that is, a taxi for the cost of a bus provided when there's no public transport to be had) to our hostel.

We were staying at the Inversnaid Bunkhouse which is an absolutely gorgeous old chapel which has been converted into a hostel. The restaurant and common area still has beautiful stained glass windows. The lovely man running the hostel (we could never quite figure out if his accent was South African or Australian...) gave us the full tour and sat us down for some dinner. With some hot food in our bellies we went out in the dark with newly-downloaded torch apps on our phones (since we both forgot torches) and a tiny bottle of Glenfiddich whisky. We walked down the road a little way, over a bridge which appeared to be fairly high above a river and then up into the forst. It was all fairly disorienting since we hadn't seen any of it during the day and walking through the forest in the pitch black was pretty unnerving, but we split the whisky between us on the bridge for some Dutch courage. When we got back to the hostel we split the remaining two whiskies (aged 12, 15 and 18 years respectively, and 15 was our favourite - we're connoisseurs now). Anyone who was on Facebook that night probably remembers it well...

In the morning (amazingly, none the worse for wear) we were given a lift down to the Inversnaid Hotel which literally sits on the banks of the river, about 800m down from the hostel. We took a gander first at the Inversnaid Waterfall which has been painted by a fair few famous painters; then we set off down the West Highland Way.
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Our spiritual guides - goats. |
It was a fairly straightforward walk at first so we thought the whole thing must be a pleasant stroll. Then we started climbing over the odd rock. Then we started climbing UP the odd rock face. Then it became a scramble. I'm not complaining, I think we're both girls who prefer a scramble to a pleasant stroll. We ended up under these huge overhanging rocks, with a steep fall down over massive boulders to the lake beneath us. When we descended on the other side we realised we'd clambered over Rob Roy's Cave (supposedly he lived there for a while after his house was burned down. I sound like I know what I'm talking about but actually I'm not sure who he is. Anyway. I'm English.) but we couldn't get to the cave from below; we could just see the painted word 'CAVE' on one of the rocks (or it could have been 'DAVE'... who knows).
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Rave? |
We took a break on a huge grassy boulder that we had to scale to find a seat, and it started snowing. (This would turn out to be something of a pattern.) According to Jess' GPS on her phone we were making good progress, so we decided to walk to the top of the loch before turning back, about 5-6 miles. The path just got narrower and more rocky and we found ourselves hugging the cliffs on more than one occasion, but it was pretty spectacular. It was grey and overcast but the sun would come out occasionally, and of course, any time we sat down there'd be a minor blizzard. We came across a bothy which had been left in a pretty messy state, but it was the first time I'd seen a bothy (for any other n00bs like me: a little house walkers can stay in, with a leave-it-as-you-found-it-(or-better) policy). We finally reached a good point to turn back and stopped to eat our hostel-made sandwiches. It started snowing.
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Jess being snowed on/attacked by snow |
The journey back seemed to go a lot faster and we took a little break on the lake shore for me to read my book and Jess to sketch the lake. After finally reaching the famous Inversnaid Hotel on the banks of the lake that marked our return we had a refreshing pint of lemonade each. By the time we left the hotel again, there was a blizzard going on outside. It had been glorious sunshine when we went in. Scotland.
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Not noticing the ominous clouds behind us... |
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...and then they burst. |
We still had some energy (miraculously) so we decided to hike it up the hill on the other side of the hotel to the ruins of an ancient village. They were perched on top of the hill and were beautiful, though there wasn't a lot there. After that we made our way back to the hostel through a silent, snow-covered forest, keeping our voices down in the hopes of spying some deer. We had another yummy dinner with some Lomond Gold ale and then changed into our bikinis for a wee stint in the hot tub. This turned into several hours in the hot tub with the mountains silhouetted against a starry sky, with a bottle of Lomond Gold given to us by the guy running the hostel (a lovely man, but unfortunately I didn't catch his name). Occasionally snow would fall and when we got out our towels and clothes were frozen.
It was amazing.
After a brilliant couple of days we made our way back to St Andrews. The Inversnaid Bunkhouse is really stunning and the staff are all so welcoming - I'll definitely be going back one of these days. All in all an awesome impromptu trip!
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