Because I haven’t been writing a journal over the last 5 weeks, I’m going to try and recall the highlights for you….

One of which was a cruise we took on Loch Lomond. Such a touristy thing to do, but in fact, there wasn’t many tourists. Mostly pensioners. And us. It was a 2 hour cruise from Balloch to Luss and around the islands in the Loch. It was a superb day, perfect blue sky, not cold. Only the boat was a bit of a shame, it was old, smelt of diesel and didn’t have enough seats outside, but even still it was wonderful.

The views you get from on the Loch are so much better than those you get driving alongside the Loch. We’ve driven up and down the west side of the loch many times getting to hillwalking destinations, travelling up north and even to the west coast and never thought that it was particularly spectacular, most people know of the song that covers loch Lomond “you’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road….” and we just couldn’t understand why the fuss. Yes it is the largest body of fresh water in the UK, yes it is 600 odd metres deep, but what else? To find out you have to go onto it on a sunny day….

I’m not a camper but even I would consider camping on one of the islands…. providing it was sunny, and warm, no midges about, the water was warm enough to swim in and I had a blow up mattress!

Our intention was to spend the night in the pretty little town of Luss that night, but once we got there, there was busloads of tourists and all the B&B’s were full. We pulled out our picnic blanket and lay on the grass for a few hours in the sun by the side of the lake. I got bitten to death by midges and awoke to smoke billowing above me. A group of Koreans had arrived with thousands of shopping bags from Tesco which included portable BBQ’s and appropriate BBQ food… Needless to say the BBQ’s were crap, just big smoke conductors. We packed up and legged it just to get some fresh air…

It is only about 20 miles outside of Glasgow. But such a world away…

Some pictures….