My Happy Travels

Today we had one objective – a trek in the hills above Loch Lomond on horseback. It meant we could sleep in a little as our ride was not until 11am.  A slow start to the day with a good cooked breaky loch side before heading off to find our ponies! To say I was excited is an understatement..

Neither of our travelling companions have much experience on horses and in fact this would be the first time on a horse for Tanya. Once again I am so very grateful that they agreed to indulge us in this activity.

We would our way up a narrow road into the farm. Not only did they do Pony Trekking here, they also do shooting and archery.  I guess you wonder off into the Scotish hills shooting clay and other targets. That would have been fun, but it was all about the horses for us today!

Our guide for the day quite openly confessed she was terrible with names and she would refer to each of by the name of our horses. That was more than alright by me, I suffer the same condition. Today I was Zac, Wayne was Bailey, Jason was Rosie and Tanya would be known as Jack.

We met the prettiest black and white steeds outside their stables. The breed, we were informed by our guide, of these beauties are Irish Cobs. Some had their feet shaved, but my Zac had furry feet. He was barely awake and when the gun shots started for the clay shooting and he didn’t move, I knew I was in for an easy ride.

We walked our steeds around to the mounting yard where they had a cheats mounting step set up which of course, Wayne refused to use. Once around the yard, then we played followed the leader out into the countryside.

The ride was only an hour, more than enough for my friends, but I could have done that all day. We plodded our horses in a line on a track the led up above Loch Lomond, let the horses have a free munch on what our guide described as gourmet grass, then plodded our way back to the farm. These horses were well trained and bullet proof. The hardest part was to get them moving, even on the journey home, which is odd given every horse I have ever ridden knows when they are going home and general picks up their feet a little more in anticipation!

After a group snap and a sad goodbye to our mounts, we found our selves driving the road on the opposite side of Loch Lomond from where we camped the night before. We stopped for lunch in a lovely little loch side village called Luss. The parking area had a picnic table or three so we fixed ourselves something to eat and then went for a wonder through the village. It was a quaint little place with neat little stone buildings, a few shops, a pebble beach which was hosting water activities from paddle boarding to kayaks to a bunch of crazy women swimming!

Onwards along the beautiful loch that seemed to go on forever with the destination for the night planning to be in the carpark of the Drovers Inn. We stopped at the historic pub (300+ years old) but the carpark was not level and sleeping here wasn’t going to work for us, a shame but it is what it is. We still explored the pub, had a beer and then drove on.

We ended up on the road to Glencoe which is one the most spectacular drives we have had. I had read about, seen pictures but of course none of that gave this drive justice. We only just got a taste for it before we found a parking spot for the night off the side of the road which cost £13 for the night at Bridge of Orchy Wildcamp. There was a Tavern a short stroll across the bridge and of course we had to try the wares…

Tip #11, see tip #10!