Rat Race Run Britannia - Week 4, day 3 - Milngavie to Rowardennan

West Highland Way - day 1

Distance: 45.04km (total so far 1017.43km)
Total climb: 1012m (total so far 17,775m)
Steps: 55,892 (total so far 1,219,323)

 The West Highland Way is a fairly well known long distance path in Scotland, running from just north of Glasgow up to Fort William in the Highlands. Normal backpackers aim to do it in 5-6 days. Our schedule was for three days - although, to be fair, we weren't carrying as much as them.


The first part was reasonably simple - out of Milngavie up an old railway line, climbing gently towards the hills in the distance.


Navigation would generally be simple for the next three days - the West Highland Way is well waymarked.


Road access is a little interesting in the area of the WHW, and that affected our feedstations - we had 18km to do before the first one this morning, so were carrying a bit more with us. However, the weather was fairly benign, so I was able to move along fairly well - the paths were well defined, which made a change from some of the previous week, and we slowly climbed up into the Trossachs. Due to the number of walkers on the route, there were also more walkers' cafes available than we'd seen since Cornwall - a couple of our team decided on a 9am ice cream as a good start to the day!


The big climb of the day, Conic Hill, was starting to come into view. We were also starting to pick up views of the southern end of Loch Lomond. However, first came the high road.


Conic Hill is something of a local tourist attraction, so we weren't alone on the trail. The weather ahead looked threatening, but the rain was holding off - I just hoped it held off enough for a view from the top.


The advantage of having other walkers around is that there are plenty of people who will take a photo of you with your camera to prove that you were there - my little action camera which I used for all the photos in this blog doesn't do selfies, and I'm not very good at them anyway.


The views of the loch were now fairly amazing. We climbed over the shoulder of Conic Hill, and suddenly hit crowds - there was a car park about 3k from the other side, and the bulk of the day tourists had climbed from there. The path had been surfaced in stone to handle the volume of visitors, which made for easy grip but an unyielding surface for my trail shoes.


The advantage of there being a car park on the far side was that this was where today's second and last feedstation was - and it definitely felt like time for lunch. Two thirds of the day's route complete and the big hill gone helps make a relaxed lunchtime!

I'd also caught up with Andy, who had started ahead of me that morning, and we completed the day together - a walk through the woods alongside Loch Lomond to our hostel at Rowardennan. 


The path was generally good - quite a few steps up and down, as we played tag with the shoreline - one moment right on the edge of the loch, the second climbing inland through the woods before descending back to the lock again.


And so into our hostel at Rowardennan - definitely the nicest of the three consecutive hostels we were staying at this week, and with a view from the lounge straight down the lake. A good day.

Song of the day - only one option. The live version of "Loch Lomond" as performed by Runrig.

Last: Suburbia 2







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