Day 3 Waterside to Loch Trool

I woke up after a reasonably good night’s sleep to rain. It was forecast to stop after a couple of hours. It didn’t, demonstrating once again the optimistic fiction department of modern meteorology. And with it still being warm it meant hot, sweaty waterproofs – something I think all walkers hate with a depth of feeling usually reserved for tax demands.

After the usual ablutions we sat down to a fine breakfast that Noelene had cooked – almost a ‘full Scottish’ and I was proper set up for the day – at least in the food department.  Well fed, I was ready to leave Anne’s Cottage for the day’s shorter walk to the south western end of Loch Trool.

There was a section of road walking to begin with but then the trail entered more woodland and across fields where the route was, again, very indistinct, though the marker posts were frequent and I managed to avoid wandering off course – well, not very much anyway!  I passed by Loch Ochiltree, which is supposedly quite pretty, but it was raining quite heavily and I had my head down.

I went over a bridge and followed the attractive River Cree, stopping under a shelter for lunch, then climbed above the river for quite a while where the path was very overgrown by ferns.  I crossed Glenvernoch Fell and reached Bargrennan, another ‘village’, though in reality just a few houses, and into more commercial forest along a good path following the Water of Trool (a river), the outflow from the loch.  I reached the car park from which the Loch Trool Trail (a circular walk around the loch) leaves – and arrives!

Noelene was on her way and as I waited in the car park I noted a sign saying that the path around the southern shore of Loch Trool was closed for ‘forestry work’. So tomorrow I would have to take the northern one – about the same distance, I think.

Today would’ve been a mainly pretty walk but it was, for me, spoilt by the rain.

Noelene arrived at the car park to pick me up but, in the car, I couldn’t find my phone. We searched the car, my clothes, rucksack and the area around the car park and couldn’t find it. Noelene moved the car and, without even a ‘crunch’, ran over my phone, which I must’ve dropped right in front of the front wheel. It was a quietly efficient execution! That was a bit of a disaster as I mainly rely on my OutdoorActive navigating app, along with my Garmin Montana handheld GPS to find my way – though I did carry an OS paper map as a tribute to civilisation.

We headed back to Anne’s Cottage for another bath, to get my wet clothes as dry as possible and to stuff my boots with newspaper and put them in the airing cupboard to dry for tomorrow’s longer 19-mile walk to St. John’s Town of Dalry (hereinafter called St. John’s).

We had a delicious pasta dinner, another couple of excellent beers and an earlyish night to head to St. John’s tomorrow and two nights at the Clachan Inn.

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Click HERE to download the .gpx file of today’s walk

Some Photos From Day 3