Unprepared in Scotland: a hike up Ben Lomond

During our week in Scotland, I decided I would like to get out and see some of the nice scenery, which we sometimes forget to do as we get busy just hanging out with family and friends.  Then, by some miracle, we ended up with weather like I’d never before experienced in Scotland – a lack of rain, sun shining, and – dare I say –  hot!  We spent the week being blinded by the pasty white skin of the Scottish people as they emerged from their homes to wonder at the bright yellow orb in the sky!

We decided to hike up Ben Lomond.  The word “Ben” is the Scottish word for a peak or mountain.  Then, beyond all the mountains being called “Ben”, those that are above 3,000 feet/914 meters in height are also called Munros.  There are almost 300 in Scotland, including Ben Lomond, and there are people who like to “bag a Munro” in an attempt to climb as many of these 3,000+ feet mountains as possible.  For all you may want to know on Munro bagging, you can read this.  So, in summary, we decided to bag ourselves a munro.

During my first ever visit to Scotland exactly 20 years ago, we climbed Ben Lomond. I just remember how much the top of my foot hurt on the steep climb down.  And that I complained a lot about it.  But somehow, in this planning of my second hike up Ben Lomond, I guess I assumed that as a middle-aged desk-sitting, dessert-loving mother of three, I would be in better shape for this hike than my just-quit-competitive-swimming 21 year-old self.  And also my six year-old son would be able to handle it.

Well, if you want to skip to the end of the story, I will tell you how it went: we did it.  Now, if you don’t want the play-by-play, you can just skip the rest of my story and look at the pictures (mom 😉 ).  If you want to hear more about the hike in excruciating detail, read on.

Being the most southerly Munro, only an hour and a half drive from Glasgow, Ben Lomond is the most popular of the munros, and we anticipated a big crowd out to enjoy the weather, and woke up and left by 7am.  We arrived at the parking lot at the start of the hike at 8:30am, and headed straight up (and I do mean UP!) the mountain.

Typical Scottish understatement. “Hill Path” sounds like a nice little stroll, doesn’t it?

The hike started walking among the trees, but very quickly rose above the tree line, giving us increasingly expansive views of Loch Lomond below us (“loch” is the Scottish word for lake).

Wow, what a view, right? Ha – just wait….

The hike was, of course, all up hill, but the severity of the slope varied, and after about an hour and a half, the boys were exhausted and getting crabby.  Even A, who is usually out front of the group when we hike, was tired and complaining.  He was convinced that we still had 2 hours to go at that point, and I (mistakenly as it turned out) assured him we were almost to the top.

He is tired already, but look at the lake and you can get a sense of how high we were (not) at that point.  Still had lots of climbing to go…

Starting to see more of the loch below

It doesn’t look like we have too much further to go, right? Ha ha ha. The joke was on us. There is ANOTHER peak (or two) behind this one.

He’s giving me a dirty look because….

…we just went up a really steep part, only to find this peak!

Getting a little pep talk from daddy.  Check out the view of the loch below now!

Meanwhile, the little boys get a second wind and race up the hill because they are fighting for “line leader”.  Hey – whatever gets them up the hill (and gives me a little peace and quiet) is fine with me!

playing with his new camera

Enjoying the view during one of our many snack breaks.  You can see the path we just took as it winds down a big slope and to the first fake peak we had climbed up.

Finally, it gets barren and rocky as we approach the (real) top!

Almost to the top, and we have 360 degree views of all the peaks around us

And finally – the top!

We made it to the top, but didn’t take any time to bask in our achievement. It was super cold and windy, so we headed straight back down!

The top of the world! (more or less)

Yep, we came, we saw, we conquered. Now let’s get off this mountain!

Turns out we did take three full hours to get to the top, and when we reached it, the health app on my phone told me we had climbed the equivalent of 235 floors (far eclipsing the difficult hike we did to the Monastery in Petra, which was only 73 floors!).  I guess I didn’t really have context when I saw a nearly 1,000 meter elevation gain, which was basically just a constant uphill. What we learned is that is SUPER steep. Not only steep to go up, but so steep that the descent was pretty uncomfortable.  Funnily enough, the top of my foot hurt on this descent like it did 20 years ago, so maybe I’m not tougher or in better shape than I was 20 years ago, but I do think I complained less this time around.  Probably just because the kids were too busy complaining for me to get a complaint in!

Views to help us forget our suffering as we do our steep descent off the hill.

Getting closer to the ground.  You can see a big patch of trees to the left that had been cut down to stop the spread of an invasive tree-killing disease.

The walk down was tough. Lots of sore feet and knees, but we did it with just a little complaining. However, by the end the poor little 6 year old legs had enough.

Poor N was so tired by the end of the walk! This only lasted for a few hundred yards, but amazing that C had that much energy left!

I think we are all quite proud to have bagged our first munro, but no one is anxious to do another one anytime soon. It was definitely one of the most challenging hikes the boys have done.

One last story about our day – after waking up, leaving early and driving 1 1/2 hours, we got to the Ben Lomond trail head parking lot and realized neither C or I had our wallets!  Being in a rental car, we didn’t have any loose change laying around.  So, we needed to come up with £3 for parking. C was ready to turn around and go home, so I went to other hikers, and asked if they would give us money (obvs. can’t borrow it, since we can’t pay it back!). One kind couple gave us their only small change, a £1 coin, and another kind lady emptied her entire backpack to get her money, and gave us the £2 we needed.  It was so nice of them, and we promised to pay it forward!  The lady asked that we put the equivalent amount of money in a charity box, so we donated the £3 to a kid’s cancer charity at the airport, then also bought a $5 bag of groceries for the food bank at our next stop in Canada, thinking of those kind people who helped us out!  It is good to meet such kind people in our travels!  Cheers to them.