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MILNGAVIE TO DRYMEN

The train out to Milngavie passes through groves of weedy sycamores, with an understorey of spike-topped fencing and ground cover of brambles and plastic litter. Shrieks of the electric railway combine with warnings on the loudspeakers: don’t forget your luggage, passenger safety notices are displayed within the carriage. All this makes it quite clear why one needs to get out of Glasgow, on foot, and head north among the mountains.

It also makes it clear why, however logically sensible, one doesn’t want to start from Glasgow city centre. The Kelvin and Allander walkways would make that project possible. But we don’t need 19km (12 miles) of litter-strewn urban cycleways to remind us why we want to get northwards towards Fort William. And the start at Milngavie is surprisingly satisfying (even if the Dumbarton start, in Route 17, is even more so.)

WH WAY: MILNGAVIE TO DRYMEN

Distance	20km (12½ miles)
Approximate time	5hr
Not the WH Way	1 Campsie Fells
	17 Dumbarton Start

Milngavie is part of Glasgow. From the station you pass under a main road to cafés, and a chemist’s shop, and a pedestrian precinct for those who like their pedestrianism tarmacked and lined with retail outlets. But under the wrought iron arch and down the steps, branches of trees replace branches of Next and Topshop, and over the following 13km or so (8 miles) you’re going to cross just three metalled roads.

The paths through the Mugdock Country Park are helpfully signposted. Sometimes the WH Way runs with the river to its left, and sometimes up to the right of it past small outcrops of black basalt, and under birch and oak trees well draped with greybeard lichen – this showing how unpolluted the air is even so close to Glasgow.

WH Way walkers approach Dumgoyne

Halfway through the bluebells, you’d fork right for the diversion over the Campsie Fells below. On the main path you pass Carbeth Loch, a shanty-town from the inter-war years, head briefly to the left along a road then back right on the path, and enjoy the sudden view along Strath Blane.

The path dodges around wooded Dumgoyach, an abrupt volcanic plug, and joins an old railway. This runs along an old aqueduct: Loch Lomond is out of sight ahead, but its waters are heard inside the metal pipe beside you. The final miles to Drymen are along the minor road through Gartcosh: a bit to be walked over briskly.

1 Hill Option: the Campsie Fells

Start	Milngavie
Finish	Drymen
Distance	29km (18 miles)
Ascent	850m (2900ft)
Approximate time	9hr
Maximum altitude	578m Earl’s Seat
Terrain	Grassy hill paths

The Cuillin: peat bog and black rock, jagged ridges and swirling mist, and even your trusty compass conspires against you. The Cairngorms: huge gravel plateaux, jammed up against sky, and after six hours of boring walking you fall over an enormous crag. So what are the distinctive risks and difficulties of Scotland’s third C-named hill range? Well, in the Campsie Fells you might lie down in the squashy grass to admire the view of Loch Lomond, fall asleep, and be a little bit late for your tea…

Tea is the appropriate beverage. Tea served in an elegant cup, with a piece of buttery shortbread. For these are the couthie Campsies, the polite hills, the pleased-to-meet-you hills. In later days comes the struggle with the scree slope, the flog across the heather. Here on the edge of Glasgow is smooth suburban grass, a pretty picture of Loch Lomond, and a wee nip of whisky at the end of the day. Really, nothing could be nicer.

Including the Campsies makes for a long first day to Drymen. Instead you could take a 7km (4-mile) evening walk, and stop for the first night away from the hurly-burly of the West Highland Way at Strathblane village. Strathblane and nearby Blanefield have shops, pubs and a takeaway café. From there over the Campsies to Drymen is a moderate day of 22.5km and 750m (14 miles and 2500ft) – about 7 hours.

Couthie: snug, sociable, homely (Scots). From Milngavie walk the WH Way for 2.5km, to where Allander Water is beside the path, with a golf course opposite. As the path bends slightly right, uphill away from the stream, turn off right, more steeply uphill, on a path signed for Mugdock Castle.

The path heads uphill, then with open field on its left passes through an artistic wall snitch with poetic slogans. It continues as a timber walkway through hilltop bog. Keep ahead across two wider paths to pass immediately to left of Mugdock Castle (a ruin, open to wander in).

The path descends to cross open bog, then re-enters trees and forks to reach a crossing track. Here turn right, signed for East and South Lodge Car Parks. The wide path runs to left of Mugdock Loch (not the same as Mugdock Reservoir further south). At the next junction keep ahead for East Car Park. Reaching it, turn right along a road very briefly to the edge of Mugdock Country Park, then turn sharp left, signed for Strathblane.

Follow the minor road north into the edge of Strathblane. The road dips to pass a pond on the right. At the next junction, the road plunges steeply into the village to reach a T-junction at the village green and small shop.

Descending from Garloch Hill towards Dumgoyne

Turn right to the A81, and left to Kirkhouse Inn. Here turn right to take A891 towards Campsie Glen. Pass a church on the left and its car park on the right. After 1km, look up left to glimpse a waterfall, way up in Ballagan Burn. To right of the road is the small steep volcanic plug Dunglass. The road passes the woods of Ballagan House.

At 1.2km from Strathblane, at the end of the wood on the left, go through a gate on the left and up onto open hill. Pass a fence corner on your right and slant up to the right to meet a grassy track. Follow this up left at first, then in zigzags.

After a gate, the track forks: take the right branch, soon forking right again on a faint path that joins the ridgeline fence that’s the boundary between Stirling and East Dunbartonshire Councils. The grassy path left of the fence leads to the trig point on Dumbreck. The path and fence continue north, through a damp col and then a rather peaty one, to the trig point on Earl’s Seat.

Take a path northwest, over a bent fence, to the top of the northern scarp. The path follows this edge southwest, as it rises to a viewpoint cairn, then dips and rises again to Garloch Hill. Then it wanders down to the col at the back of Dumgoyne.

The Campsies are made of volcanic basalt. It’s the flat-topped lava flows, one on top of the other, that give these hills their grassy tops and sudden small crags. But Dumgoyne is the actual vent of one of the volcanoes. It’s one of the most sudden and steep-sided hills in all Scotland. At the start I compared the Campsies somewhat mockingly with the Cuillin of Skye. Steep grass and a bit of basalt aren’t at all the same as black bare rock. But in terms of pointiness at the top, Dumgoyne is up there with Sgurr nan Gillean and Am Basteir.

So while there’s a bypass path on the right, it’s worth taking the small, very steep, path that zigzags up ahead to the summit of Dumgoyne. The views may not be quite so stunning as on Sgurr nan Gillean but they’re still pretty grand, and the grassy hollows are more tempting to rest among than Gillean’s black ledges.

Take a path just south of west, down a grassy spur. As it steepens, avoid a steep and eroded direct descent to the right. Keep on down the spur path a bit further, until it turns sharp right, to contour across the steep northwestern face. It crosses the eroded straight-down path, then passes below some columnar basalt, to reach gentler slopes below.

Various paths descend westwards towards GlengoyneDistillery, converging on a stile. Across this, fork left down a dip in a field between two ash trees to another stile. The path runs down a final field to the roadside just south of the distillery.

Turn right to the distillery, and cross the road to a track between whisky warehouses, the distillery’s parking area. Through a gate the track becomes a rough field track, bending right, then reaching the WHWay. Turn right – you’ve still got 10km to do to Drymen.