Rowardenen to Inverranan

You are all probably aware of the Scottish Song " I'll take the high road and you'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland before you. For me and my true love will never meet again on the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond". It is actually a code about the WHW. It means that one should take the high road when walking around Loch Lomond because it is easier and if you take the low road it will take you a very long time. My plan for the day was to stay on the high path which was a nice flat forestry access road and over 4 k would be very easy. Clan Meeweise I knew would take the low road as would the mountain goat Seattlites. My plan was to leave early so I wouldn't have to lose face with my cohikers. I left at 7:30 after a very hearty breakfast at the Rowardenen hotel. It was also supposed to pour in the afternoon so the earlier I got going the less rain I would have to deal with. Two days of no rain was pretty unprecedented on the WHW. Thing went very well at first but then shortly after taking a steep drop in elevation things became much more difficult. Up and then down. It was what I imagined of the West Coast Trail. I decided that my plan to take the easier trail whenever it appeared was a very good idea. I would just have to persist until then. After a good two hours of up and down hiking I met another hiker who was packing up his tent after the night and I asked him how far to the high easy route. He told that I had missed it a good 2.5 km back and that it would be easier staying on the lower path rather then back tracking as they joined up in another 2 km. I could have cried. He said the consolation was the better view and the bragging rights so I persisted. Obviously the Scottish keepers of the WHW didn't want people whimping out taking the easy route so they hadn't marked it. The has to be some motchoness with doing this hike. Despite being a very popular trail I really felt alone much of the time while hiking the low road today. I passed ancient abandoned buildings the forest was reclaiming. Parts of the forest were very quiet and when one got away from the water a little eerie. I went a very long time without talking to anyone. I met some Germans from the Black Forest of Germany. I told them that my Great Great Grandmother Finkbinner who had been from the Black Forest and that in my mother's estate I had been bequeathed a very ugly blue plate from my G G GM which looked to have been mass produced in 1895 and has lost all of it's paint and if I didn't know better could actually be plastic. I told them that as it had been mentioned in my mother's will that it was probably very expensive and probably should be in a German museum. I offered to mail it to them but I think they thought I was crazy. So much for trying to reprieve valuable treasures to their homeland. I met some portly and very friendly English who were spending their summer hiking while their wives drove the car and spent their money. They were friends from the Rotary club. They expected to do 1000 miles this summer. This part of the trail was very treacherous just up and down. The Englishmen were moving very slowly. Like turtles. I kept going. I finally found a flat area for a break and a very chatty English couple called Jackie and Andrew came up and started chatting to me. Somehow the knew I was from Canada. My MEC hat, shirt pants socks and backpack had given me away. Their son lived in Cochrane just outside of Calgary so they were well familiar with MEC. I walked and talked to them for about 2 hours. They were hiking from Dover in the very south to the Orkney Isles. They had been at it for 2.5 months. They were equipped with two cars so would leave a car at the end of one segment and drive back to start the segment. They would stay at the same accommodation for a week and hike the segments in that area before moving on. They had one month left. I asked them which part of the route they liked the best and they felt it was a toss up between a stretch in England and the WHW which made me quite happy. They had also hiked Hadrian's wall and felt that the Way was much better. There was only about 3days of hiking on the wall which was good and could probably be done as day hikes which I will have to remember for the future. They were going to take a break at the top of the lake by a herd of ferrel goats. The midge situation was quite bad so I pushed on leaving Loch Lomond and slowly starting my ascent into the Scottish highlands along the Falloch river. The rain had pretty well held off but then started very lightly. I made it into Inverarnan by 2:30 after pretty well 7 hours of continuous hiking. Was I ever tired as I sat down in the pub to wait for my room to be prepared. I must have drank 3 pints of water. Within minutes of my sitting down it started to pour rain. I had made it in just in the nick of time. I joined the Meeweise clan for supper in the bar before a well deserved sleep. Grant of the Meeweise clan has been having knee problems. Fortunately his wife Carol is a physio, Winnie is a sports doctor and Mary Beth is a kinesiologist so he is getting lots of attention. Every time I see him however he is sporting an additional piece of sports tape on his body. If this continues I think he will become a modern day version of the Tin man from the Wizard of Oz.Read more