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About Loch Ard | Parking Location | OS Map | Current Weather
Who would have guessed it, our first day in Scotland and it was chucking it down. Rather than get up high as we had originally planned, we took one of our plan B options which was to follow the 8-mile loop around Loch Ard forest.
The main car park was nice and quiet with plenty of spaces. We headed off along the main track, this is exactly what we’ve come to expect from forest tracks, a wide gritty track that is more than suitable for forest vehicles as well as walkers. It's easy walking, and at some points can feel a bit too easy, but on a wetter day, it’s quite nice to not have to fuss.
We followed the track for some distance. There were dense forests on either side but the wide track stayed the same and as the view of wet trees started to get a bit repetitive, we soon got to chatting about everything from our waterproofs that were currently being put to the test to the other walks we wanted to do in our week staying in the Trossachs.
Just as we were starting to get our fill of wet moody forests, we happened upon the rather beautiful Lochan a’ Ghleannain. Here we hopped off the path to take a look closer to the water. The track continued past the body of water, and it was nice to see the views open up a little bit more. The irony of a body of water cheering us up while the sky continued to pour on us wasn’t lost on us, but it was just the thing to break up the repetitive nature of the forest.
From here the path starts to rise, and eventually we found ourselves getting some easy height. The path starts to flatten, and we get our first glimpse of Loch Ard as well as the surrounding mountains. This was the view we had been waiting for and was well worth the wait. The clouds that had spent the last 45 minutes trying to soak us to the bone, added a beautiful moodiness to the area.
We decided here that we would cut this walk a little short as the rain just wasn’t giving up, so rather than follow the main 8-mile route, we followed a little forest path through the woodland giving us a little shortcut down towards the lower section of the path. This path wasn’t difficult to follow and was well walked but as it was so narrow and pretty overgrown the wet plants couldn’t help but rub up against our trousers. I was wearing water-resistant ones, you can guess just how wet I got here. In hindsight, it’s probably wise to avoid this section on a wet day but in the dry, it would be quite a nice change of pace.
This path continues to drop you down as it winds around the hillside and eventually ends up on the return section of the 8-mile loop. We had previously seen Duke Murdoch’s Castle on the map, and with no prior knowledge of this, we headed over to the forest path which runs along to the castle. The remains of what seems to be a hunting lodge on the lake are what is left of Duke Murdoch’s Castle and if I'm being honest, as nice as it was getting closer to Loch Ard, there wasn’t much of a “castle” to view. As we’d gone out of our way, we did settle and have our lunch here as it was a little covered and managed to keep the worst of the rain off us.
On the way back up towards the 8-mile route we found a huge number of mushrooms over the woodland floor, even some puffballs releasing spores when raindrops hit them. We don’t know a huge amount about these but have put photos and videos below. After spending some time looking at these and exploring the forest floor, we continued. It's more of the same here, aside from at points having Loch Ard on our left which was a nice change. Eventually, towards the end of the walk, the Loch comes right up to the path and not long after the path took us back up towards the car park.
I’d like to go back and do a longer route here when it’s not raining, as the heavy rain ensured we rushed around rather than taking in the sights a little more, but it’s a nice easy route through a large forest with some great views when you get up high.
