Saturday 27th April 2024

It was very cold overnight, I’d put the “night” heating on to make sure it didn’t get too cold, but it dropped to around 1C and we definitely needed the heating to get going in the morning.

I didn’t wake ’til 8:30am, we had sausages for breakfast, and then on with the walking gear.

Quickly ordered pizza for later.

We set off for Aberfoyle, through Lemahamish forest, it’s a beautiful forest walk, with some great views, including one I’d never seen of Ben Lomond from the opposite side, very much up and down hills in parts, but a really nice walk, the sun was warm, but the air temperature was pretty chilly, only around 10-12C.

We passed through Aberfoyle, first time I’d ever been here, very much reminded me of Callendar, we wandered around a bit, and had a seat in the sun down by the river, there’s a really handy Scottish Water bottle topup station just by the river.

After a brief rest, we headed up towards the Forest Park again, it’s a beatiful walk, we got to the lower waterfalls, just at the bridge, but the bridge was closed, the waterfalls are great.

We opted to ford the river close to the closed bridge, it wasn’t too bad, and worth it because we got to wander to the hide, and while we were there, we spotted Red Squirrels, and lots of birds, hopefully they’ll fix the bridge soon.

We then continued up the hill towards the other waterfalls, past Go Ape, it was warm in the sun, and wee sat at the upper waterfalls for a while, listening to the water, only intermittently interrupted by squeals of excitement from the folks at Go Ape.

By this point, we were quite hungry, so wandered back into Aberfoyle, I slipped fording the river the second time, fortunately my shoes are waterproof so no wet feet.

We got lunch in McGregors on the main street, really nice, and would definitely recommend, we had the toastie and soup combo, and my tomato soup and bacon and brie and cranberry toastie was really tasty.

Back to the site, via Co-Op for a bottle of wine, again a nice walk back through the forest.

Back, and we rested up, until we could collect Pizza at 7pm, I really enjoyed mine, but the nduja was a bit spicy for Gayle, accompanied by a nice cold bottle of wine, dishes washed and we settled down to watch some TV.

We were both exhausted from the walk, and I passed out around 9:30pm.