Climbing Ben Lomond

Friday was a beautiful, sunny, autumnal day and so we decided to climb Ben Lomond the next day. Unfortunately the next day was cloudy, damp and miserable. Nevertheless we set off early in the hope that the weather might clear as the day went on. It never did!

The carpark at the base of the Ben was pretty busy indicating that there were plenty of other eejits willing to ascend 3,600 feet so that they could have a fantastic view of.....clouds.

I was really disappointed to see that the Forestry Commission had been hard at work decimating the trees that used to shroud the path on the way up to the 'proper' start of the walk, indicated by a small sign bolted to a stone. I know that it's sustainable forest and all that jazz, but it looks shit now and I it will be decades before it gets back to the way it used to be. It's a real shame.

This was my fourth time up Ben Lomond, but to my amazement it was Susan's first. She just hadn't got round to bagging this munroe yet and I was happy to be with her on her first trip up there.

The climb took us about three hours with the cloud cover increasing the further up we went until half an hour from the summit the visibility was down to about 20 feet which was a bit unnerving as I was aware of some of the sheer drops that we were strolling past.

At the summit it was absolutely freezing and so we only stayed there for 5 minutes with the rest of the poor sods who had been daft enough to climb up too, offering to take our picture. The look on Susan's face told me that she had had enough 'fun' on the summit and so we started to hot-foot it back down as quickly as we could without plunging to our deaths!

A couple of hours later we were back in the car and on our way to The Oak Tree Inn in Balmaha for lunch.

Job done!