6/5/11 Friday.
Today we had determined to follow the WHW sort of over the hills east of the northern part of Loch Lomond rather than the tame lochside route.
The very nice bunk house had a drying room of great eficacy and by morning all clothes and boots were dry. Alas not for long. We headed up the road to the farm at the ruined garison (built to contain and capture Rob Roy, he and his son burnt it to the ground). Turning up the hill to follow a fence boundary we had a short discussion with a herd of Highland Cattle and headed up into the mist and light rain. Quite quickly we realized we had been seduced by a younger and more prominent fence and had to back track to find the elderly rusted fence we were to follow through the rain for the next 10km.
The fence itself is remarkable with iron posts and rusting wire still more is its route up near vertical rock and through bog and lochan. Our problem was to follow it as closely as possible and in poor visability this was not easy, at one point becoming seperated we experienced a worrying 10mins before finding each other further down the line. The terrain was such that loosing the fence and without a GPS there would be doubt as to ever finding it again. Still all good things must end and as we started to descend from the last minor summit down more bog and peat hags the sun briefly shone, from that point the day looked up and we even started to dry out a bit as we descended off Cruach at the side of Ben Glas Burn seeing some beautiful waterfalls on the way down to Loch Lomond. We are now camped at the north end of Loch at Beinglas campsite washed and drying in the evening sun after a day both of us would rather forget.
Link to where we are on Google Maps