A Short Walk at Glengoyne

With the 14th of February brings lots of lovey dovey posts and while we ourselves did do a little exchange of presents we also chose to head out for a Valentine’s Day walk in between snow showers. Our target for the day was to follow a route going from the Glengoyne Distillery up to The Earl’s Seat near Dumgoyne and Kilearn. Here’s how far we got…

Our chosen route for the day was not too far from home and took around half an hour in the car to get to. Based on our research online our walking path started next to the Glengoyne Distillery which despite having plentiful parking was for whisky tour visitors only. Instead we had to leave the car parked in a layby and cross the busy road to get to the start point.

Luckily, there were other walkers about to follow as the Glengoyne walking route was a little unclear from the roadside. Having had snow showers on and off most of the morning the ground was rather soggy and a bit slippy so the path through the field was a little treacherous but fortunately we both kept our balance as we made the climb towards Earl’s Seat.

Farmland Views on the Glengoyne walk
Pretty views over farmland (shame bonfire smoke got in the way)

Though we are quite aware that we are no at peak physical fitness our walk up the hill made us realize just how out of shape we are. And nothing shows you how slow you are more than a man hiking passed you with a suitcase (yes a suitcase!). Turns out the suitcase contained an camera drone as we found out when we eventually go the top of the incline. I imagine the views form the drone footage would have been quite spectacular with the snow covered surroundings.

Having got quite out of puff just on the initial section on the route and with the weather not being great there was no way we were going to conquer the Earl’s Seat route today. We decided to just complete the start of the walk instead but we did get nice views even from our lower vantage point.

View over Ben Lomond from our short walk at Glengoyne
View over Ben Lomond from our short walk at Glengoyne

Our views over the snow covered Ben Lomond were quite impressive and is one of the reasons we certainly will return to complete the route (and actually get to the Earl’s Seat) on another day. Our trip also put plenty of further plans into motion for getting some more weekend walks onto the cards as we haven’t been very good at our weekend wanders trips recently. With both of us working full time through the week and therefore filling our weekends with household chores we don’t have a lot of time to plan adventures for our days off but with views like these we’re certainly going to try our hardest to take advantage of good weather when we can.

Snow on Earls Seat, Glengoyne
Grey skies over snow caped Earl’s Seat, Glengoyne