Loch Lomond & Ben Lomond hike

Today we headed from Stirling to Loch Lomond, where we hiked the Ben Lomond mountain.

We started our day with coffee and full Scottish breakfasts at a local cafe, where we both tried haggis, which is a savory pudding, traditionally made by stuffing a sheep's stomach with the animal's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, then boiled. Haggis also happens to be the national dish of Scotland, and it was pretty good!

After eating we walked to the rental car location and picked up our vehicle, and then drove back to our hotel to grab our luggage. To our surprise there was a parade blocking our path, and we ended up parking a few blocks away, and had quite a mission to get that luggage back. The cleaners were actually waiting for us outside our door when we arrived as the parade pushed us over our checkout time!

Our next stop was a grocery store where we loaded up on granola bars and other non-perishables for our upcoming hikes. From here we made the drive to Loch Lomond on some beautiful country roads.

Once at Loch Lomond we went to the base of Ben Lomond mountain to start our climb via the Ben Lomond trail. The trail started steep, and continued steep, with large stone steps making up the bulk of the climb. We were afforded beautiful views of the nearby loch for most of the route, as well as the other surrounding mountains. Once we were 2/3 done with the hike we were hit by a rainstorm, and we saw that the mountain peak was entirely consumed in a cloud so we turned back around. We had a fun climb back down, but did get soaked!

After the hike we stopped in a small town for a Scottish dinner at a pub, and then continued on to our hotel for the night. At the hotel we were exhausted, and we went into what we thought was our room. We unpacked and then Chris noticed that our key number didn’t match the room number! It turns out this hotel had left this room unlocked, and we’d went into the wrong one 😂 We frantically repacked as quick as we could and switched to the right room, which was MUCH bigger and had a view, and then finally called it a night.En savoir plus