Scotland Diary: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs | Day Two
We both woke up the next day with the source of our depression discovered - Mother Nature was in town. And she was here to stay a further 5 days with her dreadful but natural monthly 'gift'. Feeling slightly more positive and glad to have a reason for our moaning, we were determined to attempt Doon Hill again.
I’d woken at silly o’clock to take a shower as is a recurring theme throughout our journey. It’s also something I did when we shared a hostel room back in New Zealand. I hate crowds. I’m actually not too great with people full stop and it'll often deter me from simple things like going to shared kitchens or shared bathrooms when I know they’ll be chocker. I like to pick odd times, times that are most likely to be quiet. Like 4 am. No, I’m not joking. I don’t sleep all too great, even with my earplugs and I often wake up at 3 am or 4 am. This particular day happened to be 4 am, so that was it, off to the shower to fully refresh.
Naturally, Rachel will still be asleep at whatever time I return from the shower so I always try to be quiet. It’s turned into somewhat of a routine. I’ll shower, brush my teeth (for the first of three times a day), dress back in my PJ’s, peg it back to the tent and sort out my hair before lying back down and probably falling back asleep. The second time I awaken, Rachel will almost always still be asleep. In which case I’ll read until she bursts with life declaring she needs coffee.
Then the routine goes as follows: get dressed for the day, scrape hair away from the face, make coffee, make breakfast, drink coffee, eat breakfast, brush teeth again, do dishes (either straight away if quiet or later when everybody’s out), retreat back to camp chairs, then will ourselves to get up again and actually do something with our day. And for this particular day, of course, we were going to ace Doon Hill.
Rachel contemplating life down by the riverside before we attempt Doon Hill
Once again, the heat was unexplainably hot. So I think it's fair to say that we prepared for the hike quite well, tank tops, suncream, summer hats etc. Everything was going reasonably well in our book and once again we found ourselves at the point of the three paths. Last time, we took the left route. So we had the option of straight up the middle or taking the path on the very right. We figured that seeing as the couple with the toddler went up the middle, we’d try that.
Further up the hill we went, shielded by woodland, forestry and smatterings of sunlight here and there. We sang theme songs from films to each other, seeing if the other could guess what film it was from. My go-to is always ‘The Last Mohicans’ which Rachel always guesses before I’ve even finished the first note. Then it’ll be a choice of Titanic or Jurassic Park because apparently, we can’t remember any other theme tunes. We’d also reminisce about New Zealand, laugh about whatever came to mind and I’d continue my crime stories.
Suddenly, things started to look a little familiar on this route. I was sure I’d passed that tree… Rachel was sure we’d seen that huge rock before… Yep. We were back on the path to Aberfoyle. The same path we’d seen a total of six times in two days. Needless to say, we hadn’t made it to Doon Hill. Yet again.
Probably taken during the 2nd or 3rd time we’d walked this trail…
The next day, after taking Geraldine down and checking out of Cobleland, we booked a new site in Fort William for us to go to. That was pretty much it for Loch Lomond if I’m honest. We did most of our sightseeing whilst in the car, stopping at various points along the edge of the loch to try and capture different angles. We took it in turns to drive around so that each would get a chance of taking in the view. And that’s really as far as we got before we drove to Fort William, stopping at Costa for a much-needed coffee break and using the wifi to carefully calculate our next steps.
Onwards to Fort William.
Read the next entry ‘Scotland Diary: Fort William’
Read the previous entry ‘Scotland Diary: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs| Day One’
