A wet day in the woods above Aberfoyle

Monday 27th May 2013

My intention for this walk had been to go to the Trossachs and climb Ben Venue, a mountain that I had planned on doing in 2007 until a road closure forced me to change my plans and walk up Ben Ledi instead. On this occasion the weather was instrumental in forcing me to change my plans again as it was raining when I got up and it rarely stopped all day, but that wasn’t my main problem. I underestimated how long it would take me to get to Loch Achray and eventually got fed up of walking along monotonous forestry roads in the rain. The root of my problem stems from the way I go walking in Scotland. For almost ten years I have followed the same plan when walking in Scotland of basing myself in one place, usually a youth hostel, and doing the walks in the area, but since the youth hostel is not usually at the foot of the mountain I would need to take public transport to get nearer. For example, the day before this walk I caught a bus to the foot of Ben Cleuch and now I started this walk by catching a bus to the village of Aberfoyle in the Trossachs, which is the closest a bus could take me, but is still a long way away from Ben Venue.

The Trossachs is a small woodland glen that lies between Ben A'an to the north and Ben Venue to the south, with Loch Katrine to the west and Loch Achray to the east, although generally the whole area including Aberfoyle is referred to as the Trossachs. In order to get to the actual Trossachs I started walking through the woods north of Aberfoyle, which are part of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, and despite the rain this started off as not being a bad walk. The lower slopes of the wood are mostly deciduous which provided me with an interesting and, at times, picturesque walk. On reaching a stream I could hear the unmistakable sound of a waterfall and a short walk upstream revealed the source of the sound, a tall, spectacular waterfall with the rain-swollen Allt a’ Mhangham falling in many cascades to the rock pool below surrounded by an amphitheatre of trees.

Unfortunately, after climbing the bank on the other side of the waterfall, I soon left the deciduous trees behind and entered one of the many conifer plantations that plague Scotland. I was following the National Cycle Network route seven along dull, wide forest roads with little variation in the terrain or the vegetation. The rain continued to fall and the forest road was taking such a winding, torturous route over the hill it was taking me a lot longer to get to the Trossachs than I had anticipated and I was not enjoying the journey. I was getting wet, not getting anywhere, the view was terrible, the forest road was tedious in the extreme, and the prospect of climbing Ben Venue in this weather did not fill me with excitement. There is a world of difference between the top of a mountain in good weather and in bad weather. In good weather it is the best place in the world, in bad weather it is the worst place you could possibly be; why would you choose to go up there in bad weather?

I have been up mountains in bad weather many times before and they do have their appeal, but as I get older those advantages lose their appeal compared with the insurmountable disadvantages; it is just not worth the effort. In the end I just gave up, turned around and headed back the way I had come towards Aberfoyle. Beyond the waterfall I climbed up to the visitor centre, which was closed due to renovation, so I had my lunch sitting outside before leaving along one of a number of way-marked paths in the area that had attracted my attention. These stay mainly in the deciduous area of the wood keeping away from the conifer plantation that had so depressed me earlier, so I started with a path marked with green posts and labelled the Oat Coppice Trail. This was so much better than the forest roads I’d been on earlier as the path was narrow and undulating, winding around the hillside and working with the terrain rather than bulldozing through it. Unlike the lifeless undergrowth in the conifer plantation, the oak coppice was full of woodland flowers that were a pleasure to walk past even though many of the flowers hadn’t come out yet.
 

Just before returning to the waterfall I came upon another trail, so I turned right and followed the blue posts that marked the Highland Boundary Fault Trail. After a pleasant stroll beside the stream I turned left steeply up the hillside until I eventually arrived at Lime Craig, feeling a lot warmer than I’d been at the bottom of the hill. I was able to get my breath back while walking along a forest track that was perched high above the valley, and took me to a crossroads that I’d actually crossed, in both directions, earlier in the day. Here I turned off the blue-posted trail onto the red-posted Duke’s Pass Trail. This trail climbs up to the top of the Duke’s Pass and crosses the road onto a lovely little, narrow path that climbs through a felled area of the woodland where wild flowers are able to take a hold. This was a much more satisfying walk, despite the rain that continued to fall as I began to descend once more, across the road and through the woodland past the top of the waterfall. What started as being a disaster when the intended walk was abandoned, by staying out of the commercialised forest, turned into a thoroughly enjoyable walk.

Once I had completed my amalgam of all the visitor centre trails I made my back down the hill into Aberfoyle where I went for a stroll beside the River Forth while waiting for my bus and I thought about what had gone wrong with this walk. It was badly conceived from the start due to my inability to start from where I had wanted. For a walk up Ben Venue I should have started from the car park at the head of Loch Achray, but for that I would have needed a car because the bus doesn’t go there. Ultimately this wasn’t a bad day as I eventually enjoyed my walk in the woods, but it has shown that I need to do a big rethink on the way I do walks in Scotland and come up with something completely different.