Day: 016
Date: Thursday, 16 June 2022
Start: Tyndrum
Finish: Rowardennan
Daily Kilometres: 42
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 473
Weather: Cool to warm and humid, overcast all day with some rain showers
Accommodation: Hostel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Egg & cress sandwiches
Lunch: Cheese & bacon sandwich/Chicken & bacon sandwich.
Dinner: Soup, chilli con carne/lasagne, chocolate cake and icecream
Aches: Dave - very tired, especially feet. Julie - fine.
Highlight: Although the trail was very hard work in places, the scenery along the shore of Loch Lomond, with green misty mountains rising across the blue water, waves lapping up against stony beaches and rocky headlands, and old growth woodland along the shore was very special.
Lowlight: We didn’t have a very good night in our "posh pod” at Tyndrum. It was warm and stuffy, midges were finding their way in and biting us while we tried to sleep and the supplied bedding was ill-suited to the bed, making it quite uncomfortable.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 5:00am after a bad night (see above) and set off into the mild overcast early morning just before 6:00am for the long haul to the Rowardennan Youth Hostel. The estimated distance was 40km, which was enough in its own right, but we also knew that the trail would be very slow going along the banks of Loch Lomond in the vicinity of Inversnaid.
As it turned out the day could be roughly divided into two. The morning walking was mostly through farmland, with an enervating detour up and over a high ridge in a mostly old-growth conifer forest, and finished with us following the River Falloch downstream, past some spectacular waterfalls, to Loch Lomond.
The afternoon was spent travelling southwards down the eastern shore of Loch Lomond, sometimes on beautiful easy trail, but for a large part on very technical trail with steep ups and downs and giant boulder hops and steps, as it negotiated the steep forested slopes descending into the Loch. It was hard work, a little risky in places, and very slow going, but you couldn’t fault the spectacular scenery. At one point, as a young European hiker going in the opposite direction moved past Dave on a very narrow bit of trail high above the water, one of his feet slipped over the edge. He grabbed Dave and Dave grabbed him and it ended OK with some nervous laughter all round.
The very slow going made us later than we would have liked, and we reached the beautifully-located hostel a little before 7:00pm after a very arduous day (for Dave). We had booked our meals ahead, so rushed to shower and enjoy a well-earned three-course dinner at 7:30pm.
Shorter day tomorrow.
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