Loch Lomond

Glasgow by train

The fluffy pillows and crisp cotton sheets make for a good night’s sleep and my birthday brekkie is kippers. I open a birthday card: a good start to the day. There is even a hint of sunshine coming over the ridge of rounded peaks rising up from Loch Lomond’s eastern shore.

The ferry service the hotel provides – for anyone – is just at the back of the stone building and we find the guy running it and pay him 12 quid to get the three of us across to the far bank, where we can start heading down a hiking trail.

The Coral Anne can carry about 10 people, but perhaps only six cyclists. The boatman asks if we know much about the section of the West Highland Way going south, saying it is pretty hard going. Our ears prick; surely it can’t be as bad as yesterday, down Loch Etive’s western shore. We’ll soon find out.

Our legs still feel heavy after those exertions as we push our bikes along a grassy path to find a style over a fence, immediately followed by another one. After these there is a narrow wooden footbridge which we wheel the bikes across before having to get the them down and up the other side of a steep gulley.

It's seriously wooded. Midges are circling around our heads. There are going to be many kilometers of this.

A pair of hikers soon appear. They are German, perhaps aged in the late 20s, and seem to be experienced in coping with the Great Outdoors.

“How’s the trail” I ask.

They look at our bikes; then at each other.

“It’s taken us five hours to walk seven miles.”

Oh dear.

I follow up with: "Would you try it with bikes?"

The two simultaneously take a sharp intake of breath. They shake their heads.

Then a third hiker appears. He's a solo Brit. We ask him the same question. He too shakes his head.

We turn back.

It's only 200 meters to the path down to the rusty, metal jetty. We raise the orange ball up the flag post and wait for the boatman to come back across Loch Lomond. It’s been an expensive morning, but at least we’d found out sooner rather than later.

The A82 doesn’t appeal. There is no shoulder. Traffic can be fast. We go straight to Ardlui’s small station to see about trains south. There isn’t one for 90 minutes, so we opt to cycle to the next station rather than sit around waiting.

Besides, maybe we wouldn’t be able to get our three bikes on when it did arrive.

The road isn’t too bad, as road works with stop lights make the traffic pause and then come in a fleet, the first one slowing all the others down as it waits to come by us.

We pull in at the visitor’s center at Inverglas and have coffee. I ask about getting a boat down the loch, but the one docked only does a loop around the nearby water. Then I find a brochure with details of a bicycle route, which begins a little further south.

We find it at Tarbet. It starts out as a footpath beside the road, but it eventually veers off onto what was the original road, with a new section of A82 running parellel to it just out of sight and earshot. Small sections seem to have been purpose built. It's a wonderful surprise and we follow it to Luss, which is full of overseas tourists, with ducks occupying its tree-fringed pebble beach.

The quaint village is a real blast from the past, with small Victorian houses looking immaculate and the narrow street reserved for pedestrians. We sit outside the Village Store, which is actually a post office-cum- café, and enjoy a bacon roll for a late lunch. It's now 3.00pm.

The cycle path after Luss is less pleasant. It eventually returns to the A82 and we just get our heads down and ride to the town of Balloch, where we wait 20 minutes for a train to come and to take us down to Glasgow.

Forty quid for a double room anywhere is a bargain. For that price you'd expect the place to be a flop house, but we have no complaints. That's cheaper than a youth hostel.

Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 502 km (312 miles)

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