Ben Lomond: Worst Hike Ever
- patricecarey8
- Apr 23, 2021
- 5 min read
Scottish adventure: part 2. The Devil’s Pulpit was an otherworldly experience, so after that, we decided to go for some good old homey activities—camping and hiking, Scottish style. We rustled up an enormous caterpillar-style tent and army cots from Bobby’s uncle’s friend (what a kind individual, who we never actually met!) and headed for the hills. We didn’t have a distinct idea of where we wanted to end up, but we knew we wanted to hike Ben Lomond in the morning, so we shot in that direction.
We ended up at a lake. The only lake in Scotland, in fact. That’s right—what we would think of as lakes, they call lochs—all except the Lake of Menteith. Which may have dodgy reasons for why it’s a lake and not a loch, but what I’m going to remember it for is the trout. There were no other food options in the vicinity, so we decided to hit up the spendy lakeside restaurant. We were the badly dressed customers in basketball shorts and jackets, funny because the restaurant was clearly the hangout for the rich old people of the area. We spotted trout on the menu, and it was expensive, and neither of us had ever eaten it before, but we were feeling both hungry and adventurous. When we asked the waitress what the trout was like, she admitted that she’d only been working there for a week so she didn’t have a lot of experience, and all she knew about it was that the fishers had just delivered the trout from the lake a few minutes ago.
Well. That settled that.
Oh. My. Gosh. I wasn’t a big fish person at the time, but that meal blew me away. The trout was buttery and tender and crisp, the mashed potatoes were “equal parts potato and butter,” according to the cook, and the veggies were seasoned and perfect. The helpings didn’t seem that big, but they more than filled us up. As Bobby said once, “Quality food fills you up. Also fish.”
Armed with our bellies full of fish, we got a pretty decent night’s sleep and headed off for Ben Lomond in the morning. (By the way, “ben” means “mountain” or “peak” in Scotland.) Ben Lomond is right next to Loch Lomond, and that morning it rose into a sea of clouds. It didn’t seem too cold of a day, though, so dressed in our basketball shorts and arms with jackets, we started off.
Okay, let me be clear, since story is going to quickly devolve into twisty tunnels my mind went down on this hike—the hike was beautiful. Classic Scottish hillside, with bright green grass and old-looking rocks, sheep and cows about, and some nice fog—because nothing says the UK like fog. Bobby and I hiked blissfully for some time, warmed by our exercise to where the cool weather was very enjoyable. I even remember thinking that we did a good job guessing at what to wear.
This did not last. The higher we went, the more we were surrounded by fog, which turned into rain. I stopped to put on my thin jacket, and then my even thinner rain jacket. We hiked on, up into the clouds. (There were clouds because it was Scotland, not because we were high up—Ben Lomond is only 3,196 feet tall.) The wind lashed the rain against our bare legs. We couldn’t see below us to the lake or above us to the top, and with the wind, it was pretty much impossible to talk. Bobby, being more warm-blooded, didn’t seem to mind the weather, but as I got colder and wetter, my mind fixated on how cold and how wet and how miserable I was, and I couldn’t seem to stop.
This is awful I’m so cold why didn’t I wear sweats how much further is it why is Bobby not miserable too if I have to try to pretend to be enjoying this I’m going to lose it oh my gosh my fingers are NUMB and this sucks and why did I decide this was a good idea—
Ahem. That is more or less what went on in my brain during the second and third quarters of the hike. I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is.
Somewhere in the midst of my misery, we made it to the top—bagged our first peak, in Scottish terms. I could pretend that getting to the top made it all worth it, but I’d be lying through my teeth: it was as cold, wet, and windy up there as anywhere else—if not more so. There’s a little cement monument at the top that’s falling to bits around the bottom, like something took a few bites out of the based. We got our obligatory pictures with it, and Bobby convinced me to seek shelter with him on the somewhat less windy side of the peak and eat some crisps for nourishment. That helped, but I mainly just wanted to get the heck off of that peak and down to somewhere that the wind was not ripping through my jacket and freezing me into a popsicle.
You can summit Ben Lomond from either side, so we took a different way down than we had on the way up. The first part of the way down wasn’t any better than the last part of the way up. The rocky path was wet, slippery, and muddy, which made every step we took feel treacherous, and we had to scramble in places—also not fun. My only consolation was that every step down was a step toward being warmer. Every time we passed someone going up, I reminded myself that I was grateful that I wasn’t them. All this sounds dramatic now, but you have to understand that being cold is one of my least favorite things in the world, and I’d been cold for quite some time It was like being hangry, but with body temperature instead of food.
Well, the cold, fog, and rain didn’t last forever (there’s a lesson in there somewhere). Eventually, we descended low enough that we could see both the sky and Loch Lomond again, and we got a gorgeous view of the sun glittering on the loch. Our layers peeled off, and my mood improved enough that I could converse like a normal human being again. By the time that we got to the bottom and walked back to the car, I could admit that objectively, Ben Lomond was a good hike—but one I would never do again unless I came prepared.
Thanks for traveling with me down the memory lane of this trip! Next week will be the last in this UK trip series, and we end with a bang: our exploration of an abandoned Scottish mental hospital.
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