The Luss Hills

One day I rode my bike to the hills...

So starts my hillwalking book, The Weekend Fix. 

Loch Lomond from Beinn Chaorach:


When I took my first trips to the Highlands I was technically still a child, and not allowed to climb the hills alone. But nobody else I knew was interested. Fortunately I was allowed to go on solo bike rides, and there were hills only a few miles from my childhood home in Helensburgh. I can recall the frisson of danger that first time I dropped my bike at the base of Beinn Chaorach and headed up its sunlit ridge, knowing that nobody knew I was here if I twisted an ankle. At the top, a vista unfurled, wave upon wave of hills, from Ben Lomond that I recognised to new, unknown ranges. I had to explore just a little further, see the prospects from those distant summits.

I was hooked. 



When The Weekend Fix came out in 2009 I imagined I would go on stravaiging. But in the same year my personal circumstances changed, and life turned out a bit differently. It's been over 35 years since that foundational experience, and a good twenty years since my last visit to these hills. 

Last week I returned. 

My usual haunts these days are the Pentlands. These are still hills, but lower, riddled with paths, and much, much easier underfoot. I'd forgotten just how steep and awkward the ground of the Luss hills is by comparison, pathless, ankle-twisting tussocks on the way up and down, peat hags and bogs on the ridges. This bumpty wedge between Loch Lomond and the Clyde may only top out at 734m (2,408ft), but there are easier Munros out there that this surprisingly rugged landscape.



However memory remained true to one thing: the wonderful prospects from the top. 



From here you look south down the interlocking arms of the Clyde towards Arran and Ailsa Craig, halfway to Ireland.



East gets you Loch Lomond, west, the rugged hills of Cowal and Ardgoil, and north - ah! That's where the call to adventure lies. The hills of Arrochar, Beinn Ime, The Cobbler, Breadalbane, Ben More, and somewhere way off, Beinn Cruachan...



With landscapes like this on my doorstep, the real surprise isn't that I got into hillwalking (and for a while, sailing). It's that so few other children of my generation took any interest at all.