West Higland Way - the beginning

Glasgow to Balmaha

I left Edinburgh a bit late, and arrived in Glasgow about 6. My plan - to wander around and find a hostel, dump my stuff and then explore the city. In my experience there is usually at least one hostel very close to the train or bus station, and I was going to find it. After wandering for two hours, I gave up and asked, and was directed to the Euro Hostel. The Euro Hostel as it turns out, is the typical hostel for capital hopping americans, and all the dorms were full. Not wanting to pay 20 pounds for a place to sleep I decided to head for Milgavnie, where the way officially begins.

At Queen Street station, who should I run into but Karen, a friend from the Fringe. It's a small world to be running into the only person you know in a city at the train station. She offered her floor, but said that it was perhaps better to just camp at the beginning of the way. In scotland there are no laws of trespass, so unless you are damaging a farmer's crops, you can basically camp anywhere.

And so I got on the train to Milgavnie. At 9pm on a Thursday night the town was complely dead, but I could tell that it was pretty posh. The first sign for the way was directly outside the train station, so it was pretty easy to find my way to the beginning. It was dark by this time, but the beginning of the way was on a paved path with street lights, so I set off. A bit later I found the community center for the area, and went inside to ask the old scottish men inside for camping advice. They told me if I went a little further on I would get to a place where it flattened out. And so I walked until where the street lights ended in a park, walked just outside the range of the light, and set up my green tent for the first time, in the dark. Thank goodness for head torches.

The tent isn't very difficult to set up. The poles are color coordinated, and have little tabs on the tent so you put the right pole in the right place. Except some designer wanted it to be pretty, and so there is a purple pole, and then two blue poles, in slightly different shades. Why one of these blue poles couldn't have been neon yellow, or something a bit different I don't know. This design flaw aside, the tent is well engineered for scottish weather. You put up the rain fly first, and then clip the inner tent to it. So if it's pouring you get the rain proof part up first. There's a sort of porch as well, over a third of the tent actually, so that you can stick your pack there and do your cooking, and everything will stay dry. As a two person tent though, it's a bit large for one person.

Anyways, it wasn't raining, and i had no problems in my camping, except being woken up by curious dogs in the morning. I had done my food shopping the night before in Glasgow, but needed an adaptor so I would be able to charge my camera along the way, and so headed back into town. And then when I went to take my first photos, the battery died. So I ended up spending a couple hours reading in a coffee shop while charging my camera and phone. Only at around noon did I get the photos of the beginning monument and set off on my way once more.

Turns out it was a good thing that I went back into town, because I had veered off the way a bit the night before. The beginning of the way is in several parks. As it moves out of the glasgow area, it goes through lots of farmland. This involves opening lots of gates and then closing them again. Lots of cows, sheep, and these overly hairy cows with very long horns. The path was easy, and mostly flat, but getting used to my 40 pound pack took a bit of adjusting. Much of the path was actually an old abandoned railroad. I passed a distillery, and was given lots of advice by various old scottish men.

At some point the trail led out to a paved road. I kept walking, until dusk, when I passed the first campsite, near the village of Drymen. I camped near two belgian girls that I was to see again and again on the trail, as well as two guys that had passed me not once but twice on the trail that day. I had my first go at using the stove, made some pasta and sauce, and fell asleep.

Still trying to adjust from my festival schedule of going to sleep at 5am, I didn't manage to get up until well after 8, to an empty campsite. I discovered the glorious invention of peanut butter on hobnobs, and then set off. I detoured into Drymen, to have a look at the place, as I was told it would be another 70 miles before I saw a town of that size again.

Walking through the woods outside Drymen I met some guys from Edinburgh - Andrew and Scott. Andrew was already walking funny from blisters, and this was their first day. They were using the travel lite service, which transports your bags along the way for you, and so were walking much faster than I was. I walked with them for an hour or so, until the beginning of conic hill, when I decided that I needed some lunch, and had a picnic.

Conic hill is the first major hill of the way, and the path seemed to be doubling as a small stream. Going up was slow, the top was misty, and going down was even slower. A heavy pack isn't so bad going up, but going down, it really messed up my center of balance, making it much easier to fall. So I inched my way down this hill, until I got to some rock stairs that had been built in.

Balmaha is a tiny place, the center of which seems to be the oak tree in, a hotel, returaunt, and bar with a tiny shop next door. It's also the first point on the way which is on Loch Lomond. I met up with Andrew and Scott again, as well as the guys from the night before to have a pint before walking a bit out of the village to camp on a hill above the loch, complete with beautiful sunset.