August 3 – After a hearty breakfast, we put Balmaha in our rearview, and walked on. Once again, it’s gray but not raining, temperature in the 50s.
Because most hikers do not stop overnight in Balmaha, the trail was quiet this morning, as we walked along the shore of Loch Lomond.
Ducks!
In a little while, the sun came out.
Even when the path moved close to the road, we could still hear the sounds of the nearby Loch.
A house flying the Scottish flag – St. Andrews Cross
We met a man from Bangalore, taking a holiday hike before starting his new job in Ireland. Lots of young people are hiking with big packs on their backs, and some are just out for the day.
Jim climbing some stone steps – I’m not far behind
We saw some Oreo cows – they are actually called belted Galloway cows. They looked content.
Belted Galloways
So we followed the up and down path throughout the day, ending up in Rowardennan (Row-ar-DEN-an) at the edge of the Loch.
There isn’t a town, just a hotel and a youth hostel. People come here to enjoy the Loch, or to climb Ben Lomond, a huge mountain that is, thankfully, not part of our plans. Rowardennan is literally the end of the road – there is no way to proceed north from here except on foot.
View of the Loch from Rowardennan Hotel
We hear Polish, German, French and languages we can’t decipher at dinner. I order steak and ale pie, which is neither steak nor pie, but chunks of pot roast in brown gravy served with mash (potatoes) and veg.
Bird that kept us company Our hotel room is actually a little cabin!
We have walked three days in a row, and now deserve a day of rest, don’t you think? This will be a lovely place to chill out.
August 2 – We shared breakfast with our B and B companions – a couple from Holland and a young couple from Paris. We all practiced saying Balmaha (Bal-muh-HAAA). They are all walking 14 miles today, but we are only walking seven. Some people walk 21!
Nice young couple from Paris
After yesterday’s long but fairly flat walk, today’s route will be more challenging, requiring a steep climb to get over Conic Hill. The weather is overcast and gray, but the promised rain isn’t falling yet. Off we go.
Conic Hill – see the trail heading up on the right?
We met a couple from Calgary, and walked together until the trail started to get steep. Everybody is faster than me when going uphill.
We saw our first glimpse of Loch Lomond. Remember the old song?
You take the high road and I’ll take the low road And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye For me and my true love will never meet again On the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond.
Loch Lomond is a great long lake and we will be walking beside it for days. Gaelic for Dummies advised to always pronounce Loch as though clearing one’s throat. Lochhhh LOW-mun .
First glimpse of Loch Lomond in the distance
As we climbed, the rain started, and the trail was busy with hikers ascending the narrow path. The trail became a stream, with water cascading down as we went up. I was going really slowly, and looking for a place to rest, but there was none. No pix of the uphill slog – you’ll have to use your imagination! Finally, we got to the top.
Made it to the top!
What goes up, must come down, and so we did. The rain stopped, and the views were gorgeous.
Heading down toward the Loch
We walked triumphantly into Balmaha, and found our B and B. Our hostess invited us to use her hot tub – what luxury!
Balmaha is a lakeside tourist town, with lots of boats in the harbor and families on holiday.
Their hometown hero, Tom Weir, has a statue at the waterside. I wonder what he did to deserve it?
July 31 – This morning we packed our stuff and bid adieu to our tiny room in Glasgow. It is time to hop on the bus and move on to the town where we will begin our hike tomorrow.
Before leaving home, I looked up Scottish Gaelic for Dummies, and learned several things. First, unlike Irish Gaelic (GAY-lick), in Scotland it’s pronounced GAL-lick. Second, I have no hope of mastering the rules of this confounding language. Since arriving here, we’ve found it challenging enough to try to understand folks when they are speaking English!
Our guidebook cautioned that we need to learn to pronounce the name of this town if we have any hope of getting there successfully. Any guesses on which letters to pronounce and which to skip over? I won’t keep you in suspense. Milngavie is Mell-GUY. Who needs all those extra vowels and consonants? And just in case, we started in ED-in-burra, then visited GLAZ-go. Now you’re all caught up.
We checked into our lovely hotel (windows! coffee maker!), set down our packs, and went out to explore the town.
I liked the speed limit signs for the residential areas – twenty is plenty!
I liked that they have signs for people like us:
There was a shopping street for pedestrians, with lots of folks out enjoying the afternoon sunshine. There was a busker singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, and a carved bench to bring a tear to your eye.
Mostly, there were signs for the West Highland Way.
We had a scrumptious three course supper at the local restaurant (I had prawns, not shrimp) and rolled back to our room to figure out what to carry in our daypacks and what to send ahead in our big packs. Will it be too chilly in the morning for my sweatshirt? Should I bring my fleece jacket? No rain is forecast until late afternoon – should we chance not carrying raincoats? Momentous decisions before our first day – you’d think we’d never done this before!
August 1 – 12 miles planned. We were up at 5:30 and and anxious to start our hike, but the restaurant didn’t open for another hour. It was 39 degrees, although the sun had been up for an hour. Guess I’m wearing my fleece!
The trail started in the middle of Milngavie, descending to a shady path along a babbling brook.
There were several sculptures topped with polished rocks – when we asked one of the local dog walkers what they were for, she said the town had installed them because this area of the Way was so boring. Not so!
Polished rock sculptures surrounded by pretty ferns
Then things became more interesting:
The West Highland Way trail marker is supposed to be a thistle. You really have to use your imagination:
Trail marker thistle Real thistle growling abundantly by the trail side
There’s a mountain in the distance. I wonder when we’ll reach it?
We talked to lots of fellow hikers as they passed us by – two couples from Holland, a group of 10 from Ottawa, a couple from Paris and several who came from different parts of Scotland. Lots of young girls hiking on their own, including a Muslim woman fully covered and in a headscarf.
The first hikers to pass us today were from Liverpool
Pretty flowers:
Never saw this plant before:
Unusual plant with shiny black podsA bit of humor at the 7 mile mark
As we approached Drymen, we saw a small waterfall, and some interesting signs.
So now we’ve arrived in Drymen (pronounced DREM-men, rhymes with lemon) at Kip in the Kirk, a B and B that used to be a church.
We’re clean and warm, with bellies full of good supper. Our total mileage today was 13.5. The rain is pouring down outside our window, and the weather forecast is for rain for the rest of the week. This may be my last happy post!
July 30 – There is only one item on our agenda today. We walked a mile and a half across town to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which we have been told is the very best thing to see in Glasgow.
Kelvingrove
The gallery is near the River Kelvin, hence the name, although we did not see the river today. The museum has some natural history, with dinosaur bones, ancient Scottish animals, and an ancient Egypt room.
Ancient Irish elk
We moved on to the art gallery. The main hall contained a mobile of faces in various expressions, which gave me my focus for the day: faces.
A Man in Armour – Rembrandt Robert Louis Stevenson Portrait of the Art Dealer Alexander Reid – Van Gogh Woman in Oriental Dress – MatissePortrait of Madame Fray – RenoirThe Young Girls – Mary Cassatt
There were many more faces, as you can imagine, and many more things to see if you were not looking for faces.
At 1pm, everyone gathered round to hear the famous Kelvingrove organ concert, built in 1901 and containing 2889 pipes. Not only could we watch the organist as he played, but there were close up jumbo cams on his hands and on his feet! The concert consisted of the entire soundtrack from Grease. I miss Pat.
We can’t leave Glasgow without sharing some wall art:
July 28 – Our West Highland Way hike starts in three days, in a little town just north of Glasgow, so this morning we made our way to the ScotRail station in Haymarket, and caught the train for the forty five minute ride west to Glasgow. Once again, the train was super clean, with cheerful personnel and stations clearly marked. What a pleasure!
We stepped out of the Glasgow Queen St. station right onto historic George Square, laid out in 1781 and named in honor of King George III. The first thing we saw was a row of statues, some with traffic cones on their heads – how curious!
Prince Albert in a coneA young Queen Victoria with crown and birdSir Robert Peel with only a bird
Around the corner, in front of the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, stood a statue of the First Duke of Wellington with a cone on his head colored in pink and blue to support the Ukraine!
The Duke of Wellington
My Google search revealed that a traffic cone first appeared on the Duke’s statue back in the 1980s, and as fast as city workers removed it, it would reappear the next evening. The city threatened action against anyone defacing the statue, but the people of Glasgow rallied round the cause, and now the statue with cone (sometimes the horse has a cone too) appears on Glasgow tee shirts and post cards as a symbol of the city. I like a city that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
As we were there at the Gallery of Modern Art, we checked it out. There was lots of space, and not much art. We watched some videos, like a woman riding on a snowmobile for twelve minutes. Other offerings:
Head in a basket Dream ForeverGroup of Coffee Mugs
There was one Andy Warhol, and here it is:
Oyster Stew Soup, 1969
At 3pm we were able to check into our hotel, one of a UK chain called Point A. When we opened the door to our room, I thought we were on the lowest deck of a ship. The room is just slightly larger than the bed, with no furniture, no seating, no doorknobs, no amenities of any sort, and no windows. A little pull-out tray may hold a few of your things, but if the tray is pulled out, you can’t walk around the bed. The hotel is highly rated. Oh dear.
July 29 – As there was no coffee maker in our room, Jim got out his camp stove, placed it in the shower, cooked us a lovely oatmeal and coffee breakfast, and served it on the bed. Some day, we’re going to get in trouble.
Glasgow, known as the Merchant City, is a working class city that doesn’t offer the range of touristy attractions that we had in Edinburgh. Don’t worry, we’ll find things to do. We set out this morning for a walk to the Glasgow Cathedral and Necropolis.
Glasgow Cathedral
The cathedral is dedicated to St. Mungo, the founder and patron saint of Glasgow. He was a missionary in the sixth century, and named Glasgow, which means ‘beloved green place’.
Adam and Eve stained glass
The cathedral was dark and austere. Outlander fans will be interested to know that the cathedral served as Claire’s French hospital in season 2.
The 37 acre cemetery behind the cathedral is called the Necropolis, containing the bodies of 50,000 Victorian souls, including a memorial to John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian church in the 1500s.
Sir John Knox memorial
It also contains a memorial to William Wallace, who you will remember from Braveheart. Freedom!
William Wallace memorial
We wandered up and down many rows of monuments, but we didn’t find a single Hay or Blair (my ancestral clans) even though my forebears hailed from Lanarkshire, just a half hour’s drive south of here. I guess a half hour was pretty far, back in the day.
Many of the monuments were topped with statues of caskets or urns, which seemed a little odd to me.
Down at the bottom of the hill was a small, fenced-off area where the Victorian Jews were interred. There was a sign with a tally of the number of men, women, children and babies buried there.
After lunch we walked across town to the Glasgow Botanic Garedens. Lots of Glaswegians strolling the walkways or lying in the sunshine – the weather got up to a balmy 72 degrees.
There were rows of connected greenhouses displaying tropical plants that Scots might not typically see – ferns, cacti, and some teensy orchids.
The largest greenhouse, the Kibble Palace, also held a group of Victorian marble statues:
CainEveMary and Martha Victorian MarblesKibble Palace
The main lawn was landscaped with identical plants in rows like soldiers. I kept thinking, ‘Eliese would not approve!’
One of the parks benches was covered in colorful crochet. When we stopped to admire it, a local woman stopped to ask if we knew the story. She told us that after the death of a local artist, her daughters decorated her favorite bench as a memorial. Another nice person, stopping to share.
We walked all afternoon, admiring the plants and enjoying the sunshine. A good day!
When true friends meet in adverse hour; ‘Tis like a sunbeam through a shower. – Sir Walter Scott
July 27 – Another sunny day! What else can we see in town?
Our giraffe count increased today by 7. I’m a long way from that free ice cream.
We walked this morning through the Princes Street Gardens, where lots of roses were in bloom.
We stopped in at St. Cuthbert’s – very pretty:
Louis Tiffany window of David and his slingshot
Here is the Sir Walter Scott monument, below on the left. Scott, a native son, is best known as the author of Ivanhoe, written in the early 1800s, and for saying, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
We saw the memorial to Greyfriar’s Bobby, the little pup who faithfully guarded his master’s grave for fourteen years. The patina has worn off his nose, as so many people touch him for luck.
We visited the Scottish National Gallery, jam packed with classic European art. To avoid being overwhelmed by so many paintings, I like to focus on one thing. Today my focus was on babies. Enjoy:
This one goes into my album of odd-looking JesusesThis is baby Moses after his rescue from the river More odd JesusesJesus and his cousin John
The one below is technically not a baby, but is supposed to be twelve year old Jesus speaking with the rabbis at the temple. Does he look 12 to you?
Jesus at the Temple
We also visited a Camera Obscura that had lots of optical illusions:
A thermal Karen and Jim
The buskers were out, entertaining the masses:
We visited the Museum of Edinburgh, which displayed some quirky ceramics:
The Museum on the Mound told about the history of Scottish banking. Would you like to see what a million pounds looks like? You’re welcome!
Finally, what would an adventure be without some wall art? There wasn’t a lot, but here’s one political and one pastoral. Not sure what Paddington is doing chained in Rwanda?
We had dinner at a lovely Nepalese restaurant, where Jim spoke with the owner about old times in Nepal. Then it was back to our apartment to pack up and get a good nights rest. Tomorrow, we’re off to Glasgow!
July 26 – Boy, did we sleep last night! Still a bit groggy this morning, but feeling human again. Today is a recovery day, with no itinerary planned. After a breakfast of oatmeal (Scots call it porridge and prefer it salted, not sweet), coffee and hot crossed buns, we’re feeling almost energetic! As the weather promises to be lovely – mid 60s with no precipitation – we put on our boots and set out to see some Edinburgh.
Our place is not far from The Royal Mile, home to Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace and a mile of shops, restaurants and tourist madness in between.
As we walked toward the city, I spotted a colorful giraffe, and stopped to grab a photo. A local mom explained that there were 70 uniquely painted giraffes all around Edinburgh, and if I found every one, I’d get a free ice cream! A nice person of Scotland, stopping to share with strangers. Here’s all I found today:
(Remember that you can click or touch any photo to make it larger)
For some reason, there were also a couple of cows. Do you think I can count them toward my prize?
Lovely architecture:
Tolbooth
Churches and buildings that used to be churches:
St. Mary’s Episcopal CathedralThe Hub, formerly Tolbooth Kirk
We went into St. Giles Cathedral:
Entrance to St. Giles Cathedral Thistles on the ceiling of the Thistle Chapel
We and many others stood outside and gazed at Edinburgh Castle, but tickets for the entire week were sold out. It is built on an old volcano called Castle Rock, and served as a royal residence from the reign of King David in the 1100s to the 1600s. It is one of the most often attacked castles in the world. We’ll just have to imagine what the Scottish Crown Jewels inside must look like.
Edinburgh Castle The Castle Rock
The national flower of Scotland is the thistle. This tourist shop captures the spirit:
Lots of statues, of course:
Who’s that handsome statue? It’s Jim!
Below is the statue commemorating Wojtek, a brown bear that served with the Polish troops who fought alongside the Brits in WWII, carrying 100 pound boxes of ammunition. After the war he was brought to Scotland, where he lived the rest of his life at the Edinburgh Zoo.
Corporal Wojtek
At the end of the Royal Mile stands the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is the Queen’s official residence when she visits Scotland. It’s most famous inhabitant was Mary, Queen of Scots.
Holyrood Palace
A little history, and lots of walking. A great day. More tomorrow!
July 25 – We’ve heard so much on the news about nightmare travel experiences; flights delayed or canceled, baggage lost for days or never recovered, that we approached our flights to Boston and then overnight to Edinburgh with some trepidation and more preparation. We packed a full change of clothes in our carry-on, just in case.
So although one flight was canceled and our new flight gave us an eight hour layover, and although our second flight was delayed due to lack of baggage handlers, and although my movie thingy didn’t work, you’ll hear no complaints from us. We’re here!
We landed at 9am, cruised through self-serve passport control (who needs passport stamps?) and customs (nothing to declare? Just walk through!) and we’re soon out on the cool and misty street. A modern tram with stations clearly marked got us to our Haymarket neighborhood in seven stops, and a five minute walk got us to our apartment.
Check in time isn’t until 3pm, so we dropped off our packs and ventured back out into the gray drizzle to find something to do for five hours. Imagine us, jet-lagged and sleep deprived, stumbling down the street in a surreal state.
Thanks to Google, we found the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art just up the road and popped in. The drizzle was now pouring rain, so this was a great place to spend some time and have lunch.
Everything is going to be alright Picasso’s Nude Woman lying on the Beach in the SunA really big robot statue in the cafe
After a warm, fortifying lunch of squash soup, we walked back home via the Water of Leith.
Our apartment is a fourth floor walk up with a tiny modern kitchen – so modern that we can’t figure out how to work the stove! I sacked out immediately, but Jim went back out in the rain to get some provisions.
So we are here, warm and dry, full of salad, spicy edamame soup and toasted tattie scones (sort of thick potato pancake-like bread). A good first day!
July 24, 2022 – So, it’s been a minute since our last post in March 2020, and I don’t have to tell you why. I have fewer readers now, and I bet you are missing some folks in your life too. But if life is short, we’d better get on with enjoying the time we’ve been given!
Jim booked this Scotland hike several years ago, so he reactivated our reservations this spring, and we started to plan. We are scheduled to hike the West Highland Way (96 miles) and the Great Glen Way (78 miles) over the next month.
The map below shows our daily hiking goals in blue. The yellow stars at bottom right show our arrival In Edinburgh, and the yellow star at bottom center shows the start of our hike in Glasgow.
Scotland
We are several years older than when we initially thought this hike would be a great idea. The world has changed and so have we. Can we do it? Only one way to find out!
Mar 1 – We survived Dominican Independence Day on 2/27, and we survived Saturday night in Río San Juan last night. The two celebrations sounded about the same, with every car and motorbike cranking up their sound systems to the max, on the supposition that everybody has the same favorite song. It felt like little Zumba classes on every corner. Mercifully, all the noise stopped at 10pm, and you could hear the sound of the ocean again.
This morning we awoke to a gray, rainy day, so we didn’t mind bidding adieu to Río San Juan. We boarded a big air conditioned Caribe Tours bus at 9am, and it took us directly back to Santo Domingo. We returned to Hotel Casa Aluge for one night.
So, one more stroll down the shopping street.
One more Quinceañera celebration. This beauty was fussing with her dress, but gave me a big smile when she saw my camera.
What else can I show you? Did you know that cigars are made here?
We haggled for souvenirs – a plate for our wall, a magnet for our fridge. One more shot of Mama Juana for the road.
We thought we’d get away without concern about the corona virus, but today the first case was reported from a tourist to the D.R., and the government has begun turning away cruise ships. The checkout clerks in the supermarket have donned masks. A good time to go home.
This morning we awoke to a gray, rainy day, so we didn’t mind bidding adieu to Río San Juan. We boarded a big air conditioned Caribe Tours bus at 9am, and it took us directly back to Santo Domingo. We returned to Hotel Casa Aluge for one night.
Taking Our Time 