Maid of the Loch, Loch Lomond, Dunbartonshire

View from Stoneymollan Muir

March 2014

There is quite a contrast between, on the one hand, my parking place at the tourist magnet of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Gateway Centre with its full on shopping experience to catch visitors gawping at the famous Bonny Bonny Banks and, on the other, the moorland of Stoneymollan only a mile away.

This is a short version of Walking World's walk no 5920 and leads away from the Loch, through some cottages and up a hill to this gate at the top of Stoneymollan Muir.

The gate, marked on the map as stone cross, the base of which can be seen alongside the fence,would lead on to the rest of a 10 mile walk, but I rolled back down the hill, through this row of trees and snapped this view of The Maid of the Loch, "the last paddle steamer to be built in the UK "(1953).

This shortened there-and-back walk, grabbed on my way towards the west coast, was just 5 miles and took 2 hours but gave a good break from driving, good views over the Loch even on an overcast day, and was a relief from the tourist shopping zone.