free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
This was my second walk and my wife's first. We left Luss at around 10:30AM with low cloud covering the hill. The weather reports had indicated the cloud cover would reduce around noon - but it didn't look promising. Having the route details at hand we set off over the A82 via the foot bridge, and soon after we were on our climb up the grass covered slope. The initial part of the climb offered nice views of the Loch behind us, but the low cloud meant limited views beyond. After about a half hour of steady climbing we entered the cloud. The climb is steep in places, and we had both worked up a good sweat by now.
My wife kept me amused by asking "Are we nearly at the top yet?" every 10 minutes or so. When I told her we had maybe only reached halfway up the first peak she say something rather unladylike,
however we plodded on.
In contrast to my previous climb up Ben Lomond two weeks earlier, we were alone on the hill, as far as we could tell (low cloud remember).
After another hour of so we reached the cairn and posed for some photos. The cloud was indeed starting to thin and break at times, offering wonderful views, but to be honest there was still a lot of the nearby hilltops covered in cloud.
The next section was a lot easier and we made good progress, but there are some boggy areas that were reasonably dry due to the recent fine weather, but I imagine could get quite messy in damp conditions.
We stopped for lunch at the next cairn and enjoyed the scenery for a while before making our way down the grassy slope towards the road. The steep sided grassy hill could be slippery in damp conditions, and my knees were starting to ache a bit by this time, but it's a lot easier to get down than it was to get up. The route information said the road section was a bit short of 3 km, but it felt more like 5km - I verified the 3km in GoogleEarth so will have to put it down to tiredness that it took us nearly 45 minutes to walk along the road.
We finished our walk off with a quick pint in a nearby hotel (reasonably priced too) and headed back to the car - Which we parked in Murray Place instead of the pay and display car park. There was one resident who wasn't too happy about it who said it was for residents only - but no double yellow lines so I think he was at it.
Anyway the whole walk took about 4.5 hours and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Not too tiring and nice views - Cloud cover dependant of course. I recommend it for anyone wanting to get away from the crowds on Ben Lomond, and a lot lower too.
