Loch Lomond – Canoeing

Sarah, Susan and I on the home stretch

We set of early Saturday morning for Luss on Loch Lomond, it’s an hour and a half drive from Edinburgh, and at 7am it was already 19 degrees!

The plan had been to do a Graham (a Scottish mountain between 2,000 and 2,499 feet) just above Luss, but by the time we got there and walked for an hour in the sun, we decided it was too hot (at about 25 degrees), changed our plan and took a walk along the banks of Loch Lomond, through a quaint little village and around the pilgrimage trail at Luss.  After our walk, we spent the afternoon on the beach at Luss, reading and enjoying the sunshine!

We stayed the night in Garelochhead at Centre 81, which is a outdoor community centre.  The accommodation and facilities were brilliant!  We had dinner at The Anchor Inn, the food was fantastic!

On Sunday morning we headed back to Luss for a canoe trip around the islands on Loch Lomond, with a company called SDAdventures.  Scott was our guide for the day (the owner of SDAdventures), a jovial Glasweegen guy, who was pretty funny, in a cheeky way!  We had a safety briefing and got all our equipment and canoes ready, then hit the water for the short paddle across to an island called Inchtavannach.  We did a bit of zig zagging on our way across as we found our stroke co-ordination.

Our second island was Inchconnachan, where we spent an hour or so wandering about on the hunt for wallabies, yes wallabies… and we saw one (no pictures unfortunately, he was too fast)!  They had been introduced in the 1940s by Lady Colquhoun, and still roam wild.  Scott was great at telling us all about the islands and their histories as we wandered through the tall ferns and forests on Inchconnachan.

Our third quick stop was on Inchmoan, it had a large ruined cottage on it and lovely long beaches, with shallow waters.  This was our last stop before heading back.  The last paddle was the longest and into the wind, but by this point we had our paddling co-ordination sorted and make quick work of the last stretch.