This beautiful walk starts at the Forestry Commission’s car park at Sallochy on Loch Lomond
and is three miles in total. It involves some moderately steep slopes, but there is a mixture of narrow paths and some broad, firm tracks as well. Sallochy Bay is a camp site and picnic spot some 20 miles north of Milngavie,
on the east side of Loch
Lomond between Balmaha
and Rowardennan. On a fine day you will find families playing on its beach with a few braver souls splashing in the Loch. It really is an entrancing spot and on a fine day the waters sparkle in the sunlight. The circular walk is well sign posted with the usual Forestry Commission waymarks — wooden posts with blue, red and combined blue and red bands.From the car park make your way back to the main road. Cross it to a set of wooden posts and follow the path. Around 50 yards on at a fork in the path you can choose the blue or the combined blue and red waymarks. The blue path is quite narrow and is the muddier of the two, but easily walkable. You follow the bank of a tumbling burn, with its many small waterfalls and crystal clear water. The Forestry Commission is clearing most of the non-indigenous young conifer trees leaving the indigenous oaks and birches on the slopes on each side of the path to restore the original environment. After about a mile you reach a metalled track; turn left following the red posts that curve uphill for about 300 yards. After the track curves round to the right look for a path on the right. There is a final steep but brief climb to the sumnit of Dun Maoil from where there is a wonderful view of Loch Lomond and of Ben
Vorlich and the Arrochar Alps. Retrace your steps to the main track following it downhill past the turn-off to the blue path. You are now following the posts with the combined blue and red bands. Carry on downhill and just beyond a pair of yellow goal posts to warn of overhead power lines take the waymarked path to your right. This descends past a desolate cluster of ruined cottages, Wester Sallochy on the OS map, descending to the main road and thence to the Sallochy car park. A further short walk is
two miles north at Rowardennan. Park by the lochside and a short gravelled path leads to the war memorial to those who died in the two world wars. Unfortunately, the memorial plaque has been wrenched from its stone base. Fortunately, the vandals were unable to remove a boulder nearby which is inscribed “The land rising from the shore of the Loch to the summit of Ben Lomond
was dedicated in 1996 as
the Ben Lomond National
Memorial Park to be held in
perpetuity as a tribute to those
who gave their lives in the
service of their country".