Conic Hill - 31/8/2006

The plan for the weekend was to meet my Lesbian Lover in Amsterdam, so we had one day, a Thursday, to show Amy the Highlands. My plan was to head westish toward Callander and along the way decide if/where to go hillwalking. Just past Callander, we stopped at the Killmahog Woolen Mill to see Hamish the Immortal Highland Cow. From there, our choices for easy hillwalks were Ben A'an or Conic Hill. Ben A'an was where we had dragged Lucy and Andy back in June, a few miles from Killmahog. Conic Hill was behind the Loch Lomond Visitor Centre in Balmaha, maybe 30-40mins away. We chose new and headed for Balmaha.

The ladies at the Visitor Centre were quite nice. They pointed us toward the trailhead for Conic Hill and gave us a trail map for a trail that was not the one we were planning to walk. Good fodder for Amy's trip scrapbook.

Over the next hour or so, we enjoyed a leisurely walk up to the summit, stopping occasionally to enjoy the views and greet the sheep along the way. The summit itself gave us a nice view across Loch Lomond, including the islands that we had visited during the SotP weekender. Occasional sprinkles of rain threatened to get worse as dark clouds loomed around us. The weather never really broke, though. Fortune was kind to us.

After the hillwalk, we drove some more. I thought about driving as far north as the faux Harry Potter bridge, but a traffic jam changed that plan. Instead, we toured from Lochearnhead to Perth, stopping at a random phone booth in the middle of nowhere for me to take Amy's picture. It wasn't a bad Highland Whirlwind.