Highland spring…
Centred on Scotland’s largest loch, this glorious National Park is home to craggy peaks, sprawling glens and hushed forests. Julie Brominicks walks, meets the locals, wild camps and leaves a little bit of her heart behind
I was once lucky enough to be camping by Loch Lomond in spring. The loch was in a kind mood, sunlight and wood warbler song cascaded through the waterside oakwoods and several days went by in a rather blissful haze (I tend to forget the day of walking in rain along the West Highland Way AND a terrible pub meal). So when I read Julie Brominicks’ lyrical and lovely piece about exploring the mountains, rivers and lochs of this hearty chunk of central Highlands the magic washed over me again. See if you can resist the call of the wild on page 18.
If Loch Lomond is too far to go, we’ve a roundup of other peaceful escapes on page 56, and wildlife havens close to cities on page 81. Talking of evocative writing, the eccentrically brilliant Matthew Oates returns on page 32 to help us all look afresh at the oak tree. We should think of these bastions of our parks, fields and woods as cities of wildlife – especially the ancient ones, which provide homes for hundreds of different species (including many moths, page 40). So look closer at oaks – each one is a miniature nature reserve.
Lastly, don’t miss Ellie Harrison’s column about the artist Kit Williams, page 130. It’s 40 years since his masterpiece
Masquerade turned Britain briefly into a nation of treasure hunters. I’m old enough to remember it well! Enjoy spring and please send me your stories of adventures in the countryside.
“AT DAWN, THE FOREST QUIVERS AND SWELLS AS BIRDSONG RISES TO GREET US”
Dusk. Straining our eyes across the water one last time, we see a sandpiper step calmly in front of our tent. We see its creamy plumage and the almost-bluewhite of its wing-stripe before it takes off, leaving just the echo of its whistle and whirr of its flight. We are looking for beavers, kind of, while not expecting to see any, or minding that we don’t.
This is our third night in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. My husband Rob is with me for the first part of my hike, which links five walking trails and a diversity of landscape. Behind us are Helensburgh, busy Balloch, and quiet hedged lanes with glimpses of roe deer and curlews. Behind us too is convivial Drymen.
And Aberfoyle, where flowers spilled over garden walls and we’d eaten tattie scones in The Scottish Wool Centre, which I was mildly disappointed to discover was shop not museum, where knitwear lurked sheepishly among scented candles. It took a spirited old lady to alert me to its charms. “I’m not waiting for them!” she’d gleefully cackled, indicating her coach party. “I like to explore on me own!” Hooting into her tea she cried: “We’re frae Glasgow. We go all over. I’m enjoying mesel’!”
The National Park is within an hour’s drive of half the population of Scotland, and sometimes it seems like everyone’s here at once. But there’s plenty of room. Mostly I see people, usually Glaswegians, discreetly camped under tarps with tinnies cooling in a burn, or casting fishing lines at dawn. “Hiya pal! Ye camping?” becomes a familiar greeting. Sometimes we see no one at all.
Tonight, Loch Drunkie is all ours. In it are reflections of trees. Broadleaf belts the water’s edge, conifers crown the hills. Two moorhen chicks swim back and forth across it, their size tiny, their journey audacious.
Next morning, shrieks shatter the peace: a Duke of Edinburgh group, tracked by a teacher picking up sweet wrappers. “They’ll get a rollicking later,” he grumps. “At least they’re happy,” I say. “Aye,” he brightens, “it’s the first time in a forest for some of them. But we’ll see tonight, when they’ve climbed that ridge. It’s the same every year – they’ll be crying and snotting, then next week in school they’ll be asking to come again.”
LIVING, BREATHING FOREST
We head circuitously to Ben A’an around Loch Achray. On account of its craggy drama, Ben A’an is a popular climb, but come evening we’re the only ones here, save for ravens, and a vole running rings round our tent. The view is spectacular but it’s the forest beneath us – green, expansive, tapestried – that snatches our hearts. It seems to breathe. At dawn, it quivers and swells as birdsong rises to greet us.
The National Park Authority provides education and agency to the community and its several landowners. All appear broadly on board with the plan to regenerate overgrazed or plantation-impoverished land. We’re looking at part of the Great Trossachs Forest National Nature Reserve, which in 200 years will consist of 160 square miles of native woodland. Elsewhere too, whether dark and duff-floored, or lively in leaf-light, much of my route is arboreal.
We walk to Callander above Loch Venachar, through mixed woodland
pasture which gives way to ebullient gorse. Callander, with its accessible river bank and tearooms, is a Victorian tourist town but also has a Roman camp, a glacial esker and is close to the Highland Boundary Fault, where two continents collided.
PAST RIVER, UP GLEN, DOWN VALLEY
Next day, we cross the fault as it passes beneath the Falls of Leny. North of here is acidic rock and the highlands, where according to the season, people herded cattle between summit and valley. South is limestone, underpinning fertile land and settled agriculture. The Garbh Uisge river is indiscriminate. It bubbles round rocks, which give respite to goosanders and dippers. Loch Lubnaig is diaphanous and blue. Alerted by a large splash, we watch a pair of ospreys twist and cavort with huge, graceful flight about an islet, and at the edge of a heron-stalked water-meadow of marigolds, bugle, yarrow and sorrel we await their return.
When Rob leaves by bus, I continue through the Strathyre Forest and west up leafy Balquhidder Glen. The sky grows black and storm-light races over Loch Voil before the sun returns at Loch Doine. The valley narrows, mountains reach up and away. Trees recede. I pitch my tent on the sheeppastured bank of the Larig. I love the bleak beauty that comes with moory landscape like this. But, for days my walk’s been accompanied by an orchestra of warbles and chirrups. Now only a cuckoo calls, and just a few sprays of tormentil hunker in the nibbled sward.
At 3.45am, I set up my stove on the river pebbles. Blue twig-smoke mingles with grainy light as my oatcakes sizzle and coffee brews. An hour later, I reach the foot of Stob Binnein. As I climb, a breeze blows. Loch Doine and Loch Voil, veiled in silver, appear and then vanish. The sun bathes a parallel ridge in cinematic light and daubs a meadow pipit with gold. I hear but don’t see grouse in the tussocks. High above glens, lochs and forest, I see only layers and waves of bluegrey and purple mountains. Cloud spirals around the summit. Snowfields are crusted and dusted with bits of yellow grass. In the valley between the two peaks, I watch red deer far below, etched on the ground like cave paintings. Ben More when I reach it, is busy, the descent to Crianlarich sweltering. I camp on the banks of the Dochart watching sand martins, with mountains on my mind.
I walked the West Highland Way in 2004, so the rest of my trek is familiar, with two
“WE WATCH A PAIR OF OSPREYS TWIST AND CAVORT WITH HUGE GRACEFUL FLIGHT”
significant changes: more trees, less rubbish. Saplings creep towards the bouldery uplands. After an easy day to Inverarnan and another early start, I mistake my first glimpse of Loch Lomond for a continuity of bluebells. The path, a suffusion of birdsong and shade and a barrage of boulders, stone steps and crevices, follows the water. I meet wild goats on a footbridge. Moss and blaeberry grow between ancient oaks, bog myrtle covers damp ground. The shore is scalloped with little shingle beaches.
I put aside a day to climb Ben Lomond and thus camp for two nights at Lochan Maoil Dhuinne, one of the National Park permit sites. It’s a sizzling bank holiday weekend and my binoculars reveal heat-wobbled people and cars down the entire west shore of the loch, but until 9pm when I’m joined by three exhausted West Highland Way walkers, I have this small headland to myself. Pebble beaches, Scots pines and heather, gorse and sedum-clad rocks – paradise. I swim. The water is clear and amber. Time warps. I see the sun set and the moon rise. My short walk through the national park barely scratches its surface, but it’s definitely got under my skin. At 6.30am, a powerboat rips up the loch playing Highway to Hell at full volume, sending a large wake to wallop the shore, which takes, oh, minutes to subside. In truth, the traffic on the A82 across the water is a more persistent drone.
Ranger Jim Downie walks with me for a couple of hours. He tells me that less pressure on vulnerable areas has allowed for regeneration. Water voles are thriving since being reintroduced, and pine martens, too, which is good news for threatened red squirrels. “Greys live in higher densities, they’re easy prey – not as nimble as reds,” says Jim. “A pine marten won’t take on a big muckle male mind you, but even when not predating they’re displacing.”
Beavers too are furtively returning. “In general, it’s all really positive,” says Jim. “If you get the forest right you get everything else right. The wildlife is here. But you need to be out in the gloaming to see it. This idea of rocking up at 3pm in your flip-flops asking to see a red squirrel…” he shakes his head. “It’s not going to happen.”
I see a red squirrel early next morning in Balmaha Woods, hurtling head first down a spruce. I remember Balmaha in 2004, the broken glass and needles in the public toilets. Now it has leafy public gardens and the harbour is serene. A few fishermen are wading out, or eating sandwiches in kayaks. I sleep at the Oak Tree Inn and sink into a luxurious big white bed. But something is wrong with my ears. They’re ringing. It takes me a while to realise that after so long outdoors it’s the absence of sound I’m hearing – no birdsong, shore-lap or breeze.
So on my last day, I take a boat and my tent to Inchcailloch Island. At dusk, a tawny owl watches me with liquid-black eyes. I wake to a white mist. Geese-honk is muted, pebbles at my feet enhanced and shining. Land, air and water have dissolved. A fish jumps, apparently leaving ripples in the sky.
“PEBBLE BEACHES, SCOTS PINE, HEATHER AND SEDUM-CLAD ROCKS – PARADISE”