Strathclyde Country Park Caravan Club Site, Bothwell, Glasgow

After three rather damp days about Fort William, it was time to move on, and we were treated to relatively fine weather for the breaking of our camp and a good part of the trip south. 

The A82 takes one directly from Fort William to Glasgow, although I might advise one to take an alternative route if towing a caravan or carting a wide load. The first part of the route followed that taken three days ago when we had climbed to the top of Glen Coe and today the views were superior to then, the rain mist not yet down over the peaks. We enjoyed less traffic, the hour still relatively early, as we travelled up past the Glen Coe Ski fields and across Rannoch Moor, passing the summit at 348 metres, then coming down through loch peppered country, the greater of these, Lochs Ba and Tulla, then down through the very small settlements Bridge of Orchy, Tyndrum, Crianlarich, arriving at Ardlui situated at the head of Loch Lomond. Here Chris reminded me in song of the ballad which made this so famous, principally to demonstrate the correct pronunciation; the emphasis of Lo-mond rather than Lom-ond.

At Tyndrum we had entered the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, which probably accounted for the state of the road soon after. Up as far as Crianlarich, the road was a veritable highway, and here the A85 branches off toward Perth offering several alternative routes south. Remaining on the A82, the road narrowed once it reached the loch shore, hugging the narrow rocky edge between the forest and the water, the trees providing a delightful tunnel to drive through, or at least delightful if you are in a Smartcar. I grant that this is a slight exaggeration, however we soon found ourselves following other traffic through at a snail pace, frequently even slower as we inched past other wide vehicles. 

We were keen to pull over for a variety of reasons, not least to delay our arrival in Glasgow, however there was nowhere to accommodate us, and so we continued on. Finally halfway between Inverbeg and Arden, we came upon a layby, already occupied by one other caravan rig and a small van. We pulled in with relief and dealt to our immediate needs. Then as I poured our morning coffee, there was a knock on the door; our fellow traveller had a great tale of woe. He had lost a wheel off his caravan, fortunately his caravan was a tandem wheeler, but this had still made his progress difficult. Chris remembered seeing a wheel on the other side of the road further back however we all agreed that it would probably be in no state to reassemble without machining. The chap had knocked his wheel on a kerb, had the wheel fixed and been told that he should stop after forty miles to tighten the nuts. On such a road there had been nowhere to stop, and so disaster had struck. The van in the layby when we arrived had been a caravan fixit chap; it was quite amazing that there had been any cellphone reception to call for help. But he had not been able to help, the one spare wheel he had was not a match for this. After some time, the caravanner returned to us and told us a towtruck was coming for the caravan and he would be left to make his way home in Yorskshire with just the car. He was travelling alone, perhaps his wife was busy preparing a homecoming dinner for him. The days ahead would not be happy ones for them. We wished him luck, unable to offer anything more practical.

So we came on, soon reaching more open country at the southern end of the loch, passing the dense residential areas of Alexandria and Dumbarton, crossing the Clyde on the Erskine Bridge, then eastwards near Paisley and Rutherglen, now on wide and modern motorway systems and overpasses, until our Tomtom guided us to our camp here at Boswell.

The Strathclyde Country Park covers an area of 1,000 acres of mature woodland, wetlands, wildlife refuges and open parkland around the Strathclyde Loch, all of which we have yet to explore for ourselves. Instead we headed down to Hamilton to shop at the Asda Superstore, stocking up on Chris’s preferred weetbix and dozens of other items, before returning and pouring over the maps and guide books, charting out our nine days of touring about the area. It looks like we might have a few fine days ahead, and even better, we have left the midges up north to feast upon a new batch of tourists.