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About Ben Lomond | Parking Location | OS Map | Current Weather
We headed out from the main Ben Lomond car park past a small welcome centre which had some good facilities including toilets and clean water for you to fill your bottle with. The start of the walk is well marked and sweeps through some woodland on a wide dirt path. It initially takes you in the opposite direction to the summit, but soon sweeps around to the left and starts heading upwards. The trees start to become sparser, and the mountains start coming into view. From here you can see Ben Lomond standing in the distance and as the ground becomes rockier it continues to sweep around until we headed over the small peak of Sron Aonaich.
We could see the tall peak of Ben Lomond standing high. To the left, Loch Lomond stretched across much of our view. The small islands in the Loch really stand out at this height, but we could see some grey clouds coming over the western peaks and decided to speed up our walking (assuming that the clouds would break over our heads as is normally the case for any walker out at this time of the year).
As we continued, the path stayed very clear and easy to walk along, with small sections of rock to move over being the only thing slowing us down. After another half an hour of walking we looked back over Loch Lomond to find the clouds had drifted slightly south and instead of soaking us, put on a beautiful show of cloud bursts over the Lochs small islands. We stayed dry, but it did bring the cold with it, especially at this altitude. It ensured us that bringing thick jackets was the right option.
Further on, the Ben Lomond Mountain path skirts around the peak of Sithean and it’s here that we stopped for lunch. The view back over the Loch and the valley between the mountains either side was beautiful. We also managed to find a spot slightly out of the wind, such places we were unlikely to come by as we got higher.
The path gets that bit steeper and rougher from here on (as is expected on the high mountains) and as close as the summit of Ben Lomond felt, it seemed to take much longer to complete this section of the walk. As you near the top, the path drifts left and right before swinging you out over a ridge walk. Each side of the ridge walk is steep so you must take some care. But the path is wide, comfortable and easy to walk, plus it’s easy to see where you need to go. Further along the ridge line, there is a very small rocky section where it’s likely hands and feet will be needed to pass over, but it’s nothing too difficult, and it never feels exposed.
Once over this last hurdle, it’s clear to the top of Ben Lomond with not much height left. But the reward for those extra few metres is a view which words cannot easily describe. The view is a full 360 panoramic of the Trossachs with Loch Lomond taking up a huge part of the scene. Due to the height, you can see mountains stepped into the distance. It’s my favourite view so far in Scotland as it’s so raw and beautiful. It was only the absolute gale that was blowing which managed to get me to move away from the peak.
The return journey along the same path was still interesting, the small rocky section from this viewpoint looks impossible until you’re upon it, at which point it’s two steps to move over and then we were back on the path. Following this route down is very easy and the path remains visible for the whole walk. Having the view of the wide bottom of Loch Lomond in your sights for the entire way down makes, what can often be the tedious part of the walk, much more interesting. We both really enjoyed this walk. It has such good views that it is likely one we will return to when we are next in the Trossachs.
