So we were wondering, if there is a monster in Loch Lomond as well? It seems to be big enough since we’ve been walking along the shores for quite a while now.

After a nice and quiet night at the Rowardennan youth hostel we got up to greyness and lots of rain. Since we didn’t need to cover too many kilometers on Thursday we were very lazy and didn’t leave our dry place until about noon. And we were lucky as it had stopped raining just before. It got even better as the train clouds moved on an the sun came out again.

In the evening we found a nice spot at the lake side which was perfect for our first night of camping out in the wild. This was where we found the first evidence for the monster – lots of garbage everywhere. It must be throwing wild parties here every night. Let’s hope it’s not coming tonight! We cleaned up a little bit while Eric was preparing a campfire to cook our dinner. Somehow it took much longer than expected and we got to bed quite late.

The night was rough – stormy and lots of rain, which continued most of Friday. After packing up in the pouring rain, we continued with our hike. Most of the trails had turned into rivers, and fields into swamps (and our shoes into sponges). At some point we lost the track and walked parallel because we couldn’t find it anymore.

And then we got to the Drovers Inn. It’s the oldest Scottish pub (from 1705) and apparently it has been voted the best pub in GB from 1989-2011. Of course it’s well known among the hikers as well – the French people had told us about it. And here is where we got the definite proof for our monster: They have caught it and are selling the meat as “Loch Lomond monster burger”. It’s name is “Angus”, as mentioned on the menu. And it makes the best burger we’ve had for quite a while!

The day started out great. Usually I’m not a fan of oatmeal, but it was the only feasible option to take for breakfast. But what made it much better was the fact that we found a ton of blackberries just outside the campground. So we ended up making a delicious blackberry sauce.

The next part of the hike led us to the real Highlands, partly protected by a national park in this area up to Rowardennan. After walking through a mountainous plateau we passed (and climbed) Conic Hill. It’s part of the continental fault line. Back in the days Scotland used to be part of the American continent. Back in those days the mountains in the Highlands were supposedly as tall as the Himalayas today. Wind, sun and enormous glaciers slowly eroded them to what can be climbed today.

In Balmaha we had planned to do a little boat tour on Loch Lomond, but it was not operating today (or at all?). Instead were relaxing a bit at the shores of the lake before setting up our tent a few kilometers down the road at Cashel Campsite. Of course we met some of the people from yesterday. And we seized the opportunity of the last rays of sunshine to take a quick and quite refreshing bath in the lake. Of course we jumped right under the hot shower once we got out of the water.

On Wednesday it was planned to be a short hike to Rowardennan. We wanted to keep our energy for the climb of Ben Lomond, the southernmost munro (mountain over 3000 ft) in Scotland. It has an ascend of about 800 m for a round trip of about 7 km. To tackle this, we left our backpacks at the youth hostel (our bed for the night) and went onwards. Without the weight of the backpacks it felt like a walk in the park.

Contrary to the common route we chose to hike it clockwise to have the steep ascend going up and the moderate incline the way back down. It was definitely worth it, even though we met everyone climbing the mountain as they were coming from in front. It was also really easy to distinguish between tourists and real Scotsmen, because the later ones were only wearing a t-shirt with (mostly) constant winds of a magnitude of (I would guess) 7 Bft or more. We were really glad to have our thick sweaters and wind jackets with us…

Our next stop was Glasgow. We had decided to take a hop-on-hop-off bus tour around the city. Luckily our next AirBnb host is living close to the science center, one of the bus stops. However, the bus was really full so we had to take our heavy backpacks on our laps and weren’t able to see much on the first ride.

As we got off the bus we saw more and more houses with Scottish, English or British flags, saying “YES” or “NO” in big letters. It’s part of the Scottish vote for independence, which will take place in September. It’s quite interesting that lots of people openly declare their opinion like that. Especially if your neighbor has a different opinion…

We dropped off our bags and headed back to the bus to have a look at the botanical gardens, the university and the Kelvingrove art gallery (the latter two just from the outside). By the time we got back downtown there were only two buses left for the day and we hadn’t even had the chance to get to see the other side of the city.

Additionally we found a great guiding channel on the bus – “Ghoulish Glasgow”, which we thought was the tour in old Scottish language (Gaelic). But it turned out to be ghost stories of Glasgow, told by two ghosts living at the bus terminal. We thought that was pretty funny and stayed on the bus for another full tour. By the end we even had goose bumps, but that might have been due to the reason that we were sitting on the open top deck of the bus with the wind blowing quite cold.

At the end of the tour we hustled to the Necropolis (we didn’t have enough of ghosts yet) to get a nice view of the sunset, which was indeed beautiful to look at. With the cathedral being closed for the day we walked back downtown to look for a pub.

I chose the bar by it’s name – Ben Lomond – as we won’t be climbing Scotland’s highest mountain. It ended up – by chance – being the one and only bar that Eric had been at 11 years ago… It was full of locals. We sat at a table with a middle-aged couple, where the guy was already super drunk and urged us to have 1 and 1/2 of his drinks that he wouldn’t be able to finish anymore. We tried talking to him, but we didn’t understand anything. As he was trying to communicate with his other neighbor she asked: “Do you come with subtitles? Because I have no idea what you’re saying… ”