Balmaha, Rowardennan and Buchanan Castle!

A day trip on Spring break told by Jackson

Today was the 9th of April and we have been going on day trips to different places around Scotland! We rented a car (its an electric car) and have been visiting castles and cool lakes and other stuff. Today we had 3 destinations and the first one was Balmaha. Balmaha is a small village on the East side of Loch Lomond. It is a popular tourist destination but there are only around 60 people who actually live there. It took us 45 minutes to drive there from our house. 

Once we got there, we started to walk on this trail that went all along the edge of Loch Lomond. We walked over rocks, and saw small beaches as we walked along the water for a couple hours. We walked through forests and it was very beautiful. It was quite cold with the wind though.

After walking for a long time we got to a parking lot that had a large beach with a lot of people at it. It was off of the main road so we assumed a lot of people stopped here to look at the amazing views. There was this one cool looking tree that had the background of the mountains over the lake. Here it is:

From there we decided to walk back because we had to take the same route back to Balmaha to grab our car and go to our next destination. As we walked back the wind slowed down and the sun made it warmer than our first half of the walk. 

We walked back to Balmaha and once we got back, we entered the only shop in the Village that we could see. We bought some sandwiches for lunch and some snacks, then went back to our car. We sat in the warm car and had our lunch, disposed of our garbage then put in Rowardennan to our map. Rowardennan is a small rural area on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond further north than Balmaha. It is the furthest place you can drive with a car on the east side of the lake. It was about a 20 minute drive to get there from Balmaha driving on the edge of the lake. The only thing in Rowardennan was a youth hostel and a couple houses.

When we got there we found this really cool rock with a pyramid inside of it and the incredible view behind it. 

We walked on a path that led us to the youth hostel that was located on a huge patch of grass right on the beach. The view from it was amazing!

After seeing the awesome hostel, we walked back to our car and decided to drive to one last stop, Buchanan Castle. This was one of the castles I had researched earlier that was not too far from Glasgow and it was basically 10 minutes drive from Rowardennan so we would make it our last stop for the day. While we were driving on the very skinny roads, we had to pull off the road to let a huge truck pass, and we tried to drive on but we couldnt move. Me and Levi hopped out and realized we were stuck in mud. It only took a push to get us out but the mud we were in was super deep and left our 2 left tires super muddy:

We drove through some water and assumed that that would clean it up. We got to the castle and found a fence guarding it. It was a really old castle that was in ruins, and had signs telling people that it could not be entered. However, we were walking around it and saw a hole in the fence and decided to go in it anyways. It was awesome, there was moss and trees that had grown on and through everything. There were even stairs intact still that allowed us to get to the top of the castle at some parts:

After exploring the castle for like 40 minutes we got back in our dirty car and started to drive back. We had to take a very bumpy and rocky road back to the highway that took us back to Glasgow. We stopped at Lidl to do a massive grocery shop before we went back to our house. 

Happy Mother's Day in the USA everyone.  Kitty Crocker is taking a break!  I did love this day out with the boys, that Jackson writes about above.  Scotland is magnanimously breathtaking!  

stay well,

Kitty