Scotland 2025 - Sept 16 - West Highland Trail

Goodbye Glasgow, 

After a relaxed breakfast at the hotel and a wee wander around the neighborhood of the train station, we said goodbye to Glasgow and hello to the Train and Hike Grand Tour. 

We have a full wallet of train tickets, one ticket for each segment of our journey. Today our train ride was to Ardlui (which sounds lovely in a Scottish accent, somehow they make it all one syllable) 

Off we went on the train, complete with our picnic of Scottish shortbread. 

The train trip had some spectacular views of both the shore of the sea (looking west) and the hills and lochs of the Highlands to the east. 

Our transfer was right at the train station waiting for us, and he expertly managed the winding narrow road to find the Drover Inn. We do know a lot more about the Glasgow Rangers football team now 😉.

Drover's Inn is just what you think it should be. Quaint and welcoming. 

And famous 🤣

While we did not officially have a hike planned for today, we wanted to find the trail and we decided to do the hike back south to Loch Lomond, a part of the trail we would miss tomorrow as we will head north. So off we went.

Complete with mountain streams, mud and rocks, and some lovely purple flowers. 

To the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond...(Mom I know you are singing now!) 

Yes every step or two is a spectacular scene. There will be a lot of photos on this trip I predict.

Today we lucked out with some afternoon sunshine. We passed many hikers heading north as we went south. At this late hour they were all rather tired and many mumbled about anticipation of a cold beer shortly when we asked about their day. One hiker was just finishing up a 21 MILE hike today. Yikes. Our little out and back was just over 7 kms. A nice distance to get us started. 

Happy trails, indeed.