A walk on the wild side

I'd had my arm twisted to walk the last section of the Loch Lomond and Cowal Way with Daughter One today. It was supposed to be six miles over roads and forest tracks, so eventually I gave in and we set off on the 7.45am bus to Inveruglas on Loch Lomond. My daughter had walked the rest of the 57 mile Way, so this was her last stretch, ending up in Arrochar from where we planned to catch the train home to Oban.

It rained heavily on the bus journey, but it had cleared up by the time we set off on foot. I'd decided not to take my Nikon camera as it's pretty heavy, so took my tiny  Canon Power Shot. I'd charged the battery recently so thought it would do the job. Unfortunately when I took it out to begin taking pictures I discovered that I'd forgotten to put the battery back in! I tried my phone and took a few shots, but then that refused to cooperate and so I missed out on some of the lovely mountain pictures that I'd hope to use as my Blip today. I'm afraid I had to 'borrow' this picture, though it's identical to the one I took on the phone!

The walk began on a tarmac road, but soon changed to a single track path. Maintenance was obviously not high on the list as there were frequent large and muddy puddles - on one occasion I had to make a detour through the forest.

It wasn't the most scenic route as it followed  the lines of pylons through the Glen. The last section, up through the woods to Arrochar Station, was probably the best, but owing to the different scale on the map of that part we'd miscalculated the distance, so the six miles became at least seven and a half! I've never walked uphill so much while trying to go downwards!

The walk took us four hours and we finally reached the unmanned station where we had our lunch on the platform. We'd made the distance with reasonable time to spare, but then the train was delayed for more than twenty minutes so we didn't arrive back in Oban until 4pm. I was very pleased to find that my hip didn't moan at all, though I was somewhat puggled by the time we reached home. A good walk though, which proved that I wasn't as decrepit as I'd thought!

Quote of the Day: 'My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.” -  Ellen DeGeneres.