8: In a tropical paradise (Balmaha to Rowardennan)

Balmaha was bursting with holidaymakers. Cars were double and triple parked in the car park next to the visitor centre and more were nosing around looking forlornly for a space. Every table at the front of the Oak Tree Inn was occupied and it was only by heading through the pub then around the back to beyond a marquee that we found a quiet spot to sit and quench our thirst.  The pub was still working to covid rules, which meant ordering and paying via an app and hoping that the drinks would arrive at our far distant table some time in the near future. 

As we meandered through the pub looking for a table we spotted that those who were dining were staring glumly at some pretty workmanlike food offerings and we were glad that we had stocked up on lunch items earlier in the Spar shop in Drymen. One of the good things about finding a pub was that it enabled us to use the facilities. The West Highland Way this morning had offered panoramic views and anyone wanting to do ‘a wildy’ - as a number two in the outdoors is sometimes known (or even a wild 'one') - would have had a hard time not having an audience. On Chris’s return from the toilets he stepped carefully around the table but failed to notice that my day pack was resting by one of the table legs. He trod on the main belt buckle and splintered it, rendering it unusable. A check of all the other buckles on the bag showed that this was the largest and none of the others could be swapped. 

One of the most famous sites in Balmaha is Tom Weir's statue which is in Weir's Rest, a mountain garden area between the Oak Tree Inn and Balmaha Bay. Tom Weir was a famous walker, mountaineer, and TV presenter, known in Scotland for his long-running TV series 'Weir's Way'. He's credited with inspiring a generation of Scots to visit the magnificent countryside, and it seems fitting that his statue has become one of the most popular spots on Loch Lomond. He was unknown to us sassenachs, and we walked blithely by, but you can see a picture of his statue here. 

The Bahamas  er, Balmaha?

We left the pub to head westward to the pier. The main route goes up and over Craigie Fort, which offers a panoramic view of the loch, but we decided that the loch side was more attractive today. Around the head of the pier the narrow path held to the rocky edge and ahead of us were beaches of salmon golden sands and lush vegetation. Was this Balmaha or the Bahamas? Other more stony beaches had the feel of the Greek Islands, and holidaymakers were out in force making the most of the extraordinary weather, swimming, kayaking, and sunbathing.

and they go abroad

Mostly this was relatively easy walking but occasionally the path veered away from the loch side and climbed over a hillock. Here it could be rougher underfoot with stones and rocks, slowing our pace. At one point we met a group of people on a fungi forage. Glancing at the trug held by the leader, some interesting specimens had already been collected. As we walked on we started seeing fungi everywhere but without the specialist knowledge we were reluctant to do more than document our finds.

It's a puff ball - not what you're thinking

C'mon, you know this one

We arrived at the Rowardennan hotel around five, we wandered past the hotel and into the public house entrance at the rear to inquire about booking a table. We were too late for an inside table but if we wanted to eat we could sit outside without booking, as there were plenty of benches on a grass field. However, we weren’t staying there as our booking company had arranged this evening's accommodation at the hostel, a half-mile or so further on, but it was good to know that we could return to get a meal.

The youth hostel

This last half-mile was on an easy path but we were tiring by this late stage of the afternoon. Finally, a magnificent stone and turret building with a loch-side view appeared, which turned out to be the hostel. In reception, the manager bristled with efficiency and once he had located our booking he barked off orders as to where we would find our, ‘family’ bunk room, the nearest toilets and showering facilities. Then he realised that we weren’t carrying our backpacks and he gave us the key to a wooden store outside where they had been left by the baggage transfer service.

Opening the door to this Aladdin’s cave revealed just bare boards, so we duly traipsed back to reception. There were a few moments when everyone felt somewhat stumped while the manager phoned the baggage service, and finally, it was decided that the only other place the bags could be was back at the Rowardennan hotel. The manager sensing our flagging energy levels, jumped in his car to pick them up while we sat at an outside table and drank a cold beer. Youth hostels have certainly changed since I was last in one.

Proof that Duncan is heavier than Jerome and Chris

A few minutes later the car scrunched its way up the gravel track and we were reunited with our belongings. By now we had completely forgotten the instructions as to where anything was but more by luck than judgement found our bunk room. Inside there were two bunk beds, which meant that we had to find a fair and reasonable way to allocate the bunks and a complicated set of coin tosses finally decided that I should reside on a bottom bunk while Chris was above. 

The next thing to locate were the toilets - there was one just a few steps away - and the showers, which were assigned as male and female and were somewhere amongst the labyrinth of corridor. Once found, it seemed that locks - on the door of the toilets or the showers were optional, which was a somewhat inadequate arrangement.

We decided that we’d rather eat here than make the journey back to the hotel, especially as when we ventured outside to get a better mobile signal to phone home there was a slow wispy accumulation of midges. Dusk is very much the hour of the midge and the idea of being a sitting target on a warm night with little breeze beside a large body of water ...  well, individually these are all factors that are attractive to the average midge and coming together like this it was certain to be unbearable for the al fresco diners at the pub.

We were booked onto the second sitting. Just us three and one other hiker that we fell into conversation with as the meal progressed. Around us a group of teenage German students ran around and gossiped in a seemingly random manner, running from room to room while bizarrely searching through items. Occasionally they would cry in triumph and then move off in a huddle. Meanwhile the other hiker began to talk about the weather forecast for the next day, something that we hadn’t considered. He'd read that there was rain arriving about mid afternoon and had decided that he would get up early and try to avoid the worst of it.

The meal finished, we headed into the common room which was intermittently occupied and then emptied by the German students. There was a box full of games, which in time honoured youth hostel convention were all incomplete in one way or another but Jerome managed to fashion an entertainment by just asking the questions from an ancient version of Trivial Pursuit. It is interesting how quickly these had dated. Sport and Entertainment questions from the mid 80’s, unless describing an extraordinary event were genuinely baffling. However occasionally the answers chimed some long distant bell. 

There was an elderly couple (more elderly than us, let’s say) who were looking after a beautiful Labrador-Husky cross. They told us the German students, who had been here for several days, were engaged in a treasure hunt with clues both inside and outside the hostel. The common room windows looked out onto the lawn that led to the loch side. We could watch as the darkness was cut by the sharp light of torches that fanned out and then came together with excited shouts and giggles. Then there would be a rush to occupy the common room and the games box would be flung open until another scrap of paper was found, directing the players to some other part of the hostel.  

We went early to bed, planning a fast start in the morning because if it’s possible to avoid a soaking you can count us in.