free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
..and add 35 kilometres each way for cycling from Balloch. Being a pensioner has bad points and good points. You're nearly dead but you're ludicrously privileged and get lots of things for nothing. So when, probably because of the school holidays, I couldn't see any cheap tickets to Arrochar, I felt total outrage and decided to cycle from Balloch. It's not a bad route with a poor surface for two or three miles around the Colquhoun estate. Lots of the old A82 which allows nostalgia for cycling it 50 years ago. This statue's a bit of a mystery.
When it was still on the main road, every year the Sunday Post would publish a new account of its origins. All different, none true. Only downer on the trip was the guy in a hoodie, van backed up against the cycle path, blocking the path where he cooked his breakfast prior to getting his fishing gear out. Maybe it's not camping regulation we want, it's tasers. OK, that's extreme, I'd only a 3 metre diversion.
I left the bike where the forestry track crosses the Allt Sugach. There's a decent path on the edge of the forestry on the right side. Further up I passed the site of an excellent waterfall, long since kidnapped to feed Loch Sloy.
Traces of the path continue on up on to A'Chrois, this route must once have been popular. I got a view of the Sugach Buttress, which used to be a haunt of Glasgow ice-climbers.
A'Chrois is a nice top - generally seen as a twin to Ben Vane from Inveruglas. There's a decent ridge from there to Beinn Narnain.
I was beginning to feel the exertion so I sort of weaved between the knolls rather than stomping over them. From the rise to the summit I got a good view of the south east ridge of Beinn Ime.
The obvious notch is described by Storer as an easy scramble - hah!
I'd met nobody so far but the descent by the baggers route was stowed - fair enough, it was a cracking day. The descent's severe on the knees and I was considering the 35k onward cycle. I came in view of the car park.
I got amused by the "give me convenience or give me death" posts on the subject of its charges last year. Given the tenor of the comments I expected to see demons and the flames of hell. Instead it was half empty on a beautiful day in the school holidays. Seems to be pricing itself out of the market.
