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PART TWO CALLANDER AND LOCH LUBNAIG

Loch Lubnaig, looking north to Sgiath a' Chaise

Loch Lubnaig is a gloomy sort of place between steep slopes of Sitka spruce. It's a special site for fans of Sue Townsend, whose hero Adrian Mole passes a ‘dead boring’ holiday in the Strathyre Forest Cabins.

However this is the starting point for the popular route up Ben Ledi, set off up by Adrian Mole's mother and her lover Mr Lucas at 5am after an all-night party. This despite Adrian sensibly pointing out to them that they were ‘blind drunk, too old, unqualified, unfit and lacking any survival techniques’. They overcome these disadvantages to complete Route 8 in time for a late breakfast of bacon and eggs.

As well as this literary pilgrimage, Loch Lubnaig offers a very varied group of mid and low-level walks taking in two impressive waterfalls, the Highland Boundary faultline and a little-visited Corbett.

ROUTE 8

Ledi from Lubnaig

Start/Finish	Track end of Strathyre Forest Cabins NN 586 091
Distance	9.5km/6 miles
Total Ascent	750m/2500ft
Time	4½hr
Terrain	Steep rough hill paths
Max Altitude	Ben Ledi 879m
Maps	LR 57; Expl 365; Harvey Ben Ledi

Ben Ledi is a fine, upstanding hill whose position right on the edge of the Highlands gives it commanding views to the south; it is high and isolated enough for a mountain panorama in the other three directions as well. ‘A handy wee hill’ said one middle-aged walker from Glasgow who didn't want to reveal just how many times he'd already been up Ben Ledi. It's not just being so close to the cities that makes this one of Scotland's most popular hills.

Forest felling has cleared fresh views for the lower slopes, and Forestry Commission pathbuilding eases the passage to the 400m contour. After that it gets more rugged: the Stank Glen is an attractively craggy place.

The one disadvantage of this, the favourite Ledi circuit, is its limited car parking. Even on cloudy weekdays this can fill up. Route 10 lets you use instead the spacious car parks at Kilmahog – but this adds 3km to each end of the day (well, Kilmahog is actually in the Scottish Lowlands!).

The following Route 9 gives a wilder way up over Ardnandave Hill: rough moorland instead of a peopled path. Route 6 (in the previous section) is a longer, tougher day that also includes Benvane (see Summit Summary map with Route 6).

Once across the narrow bridge over Garbh Uisge, turn left for the small parking areas.

Start by walking upstream along the right-hand of two tracks, marked as the Route 7 cycle path. After 1.2km the two tracks draw close together, and a path signed for Ben Ledi switches you across onto the left-hand one. Straight away fork left, uphill, on a track with a red waymarker.

As it nears the Stank Burn gorge the track doubles back left, but take the path ahead. It rises, fairly rough, above the river gorge, to a higher bend in the same track. Again take the path uphill above the river. After a slightly longer ascent, you meet that track for the third time. Cross it to where the path continues slightly to the right. Less steeply now, it leads you up to the beginning of the Stank Glen's hanging valley. The dirt track met here is actually a different one, heading north above Loch Lubnaig. The Ardnandave Route 9 turns off here.

The path from the Stank Glen rises up the steep side of Ben Ledi

There are two well-made paths up the Stank Glen, one on either side of the stream. The one directly ahead, running to left of the stream, is the more obvious. They rejoin after 1km, and the combined path climbs steeply up to the left (southwest) to a stile at the 450m contour.

The made path ends here, and the way continues as a rough peaty trod. It keeps to left of the main stream all the way up the slope. At the top the path bends right, past a useful spring, to reach Bealach nan Corp on the main ridge north of Ben Ledi. It's said that a coffin party stopped to rest on the frozen Lochan nan Corp 400 metres to the north; as the ice cracked open the bearers joined the corpse on his journey to the afterlife.

Descending north off Ben Ledi summit; Benvane (Route 6) and Crianlarich hills ahead

A grassy path follows old fenceposts up to Ledi's north top at 852m, a good stopping point short of the busy summit. The last ridge-section, although comfortably wide, is steep on both sides and has an airy feel. A trig point marks Ben Ledi summit.

Descent The path down Ben Ledi's southeast ridge is well trodden and clear. It sets off past a memorial cross mounted on a rocky outcrop. After a sharp drop, it rises slightly over Meall Odhar (815m) and then descends towards a broad peaty shoulder at 550m.

As soon as the ridge levels off, the path turns sharply down left, slanting down northwards with views along Loch Lubnaig, and soon with craggy ground above. At 450m is a stile, after which the path is well rebuilt and smooth, but still quite steep. At 220m it crosses a forest road, with blue waymarkers, and descends through plantations to the bridge over Garbh Uisge.

DESCENT BY STANK GLEN

This route has been taken anticlockwise so as to have the steepest ground uphill; and also because the views up the Stank Glen are rocky, while looking down it is depressing woodpulp plantations. However, the descent by Stank Glen is straightforward – apart from the turn-off from the ridge into the corrie. After the slightly undulating summit ridge, the path drops quite steeply half-left down to Bealach nan Corp, which is the first point where there is rising ground ahead. The path turning off to the right here becomes clear only once you reach the top of the steep ground. If you reach Lochan nan Corp, a substantial pool 100 metres wide, then you have overshot and must return south for 400 metres.

ROUTE 9

Ardnandave Hill to Ben Ledi

Start/Finish	Track end of Strathyre Forest Cabins NN 586 091
Distance	13km/8 miles
Total Ascent	850m/2900ft
Time	5½hr
Terrain	Rough hillsides and moorland
Max Altitude	Ben Ledi 879m
Maps	LR 57; Expl 365; Harvey Ben Ledi

A tough, strength-sapping route, quite countrified and wild and inhabited by red deer, which gives great views of Loch Lubnaig and a whole new way of looking at Ben Ledi.

Start as for Route 8 (note parking problems at Garbh Uisge bridge). Follow it up to the lip of Stank Glen's hanging valley.

At this final forest road, don't take the waymarked path opposite, but turn right on the dirt track across the stream. Ignore the second built path turning up left beside the stream, and continue on the smooth track for 200 metres. As it starts to descend, double back left up a grassed-over track. It slants up the corrie side to emerge from the trees onto slopes of long grass and rushes.

Head up right, towards the skyline ridge overlooking Loch Lubnaig. Follow it up northwards, with the vegetation gradually getting less heathery and hampering. The ridgeline widens, and bends round left to the two hummocks of Ardnandave Hill.

A short sharp drop leads to a wide, wet col. Head west across two grassy hummocks, to join an old fenceline. Turn left along this, with a small peaty path. In 500 metres it leads to Bioran na Circe. ‘The Hen's Little Pointed Stick’ – probably not indicating that the poultry uses a walking pole, but suggesting, untruthfully, that the hill is a pointy one. The path bypasses to left of the small summit hump. The path drops to pass Lochan nan Corp, and then crosses a gentle grassy hump to Bealach nan Corp.

Here the path from Stank Glen joins from the left. The path and old fenceposts lead up south onto Ben Ledi's summit ridge, which is followed to the summit trig point.

Descend by the southeast ridge, as on Route 8 – it also describes the descent by Stank Glen if you prefer that.

Ardnandave Hill, across Loch Lubnaig

ROUTE 10

The Whole Kilmahog: Lowland to Highland

Start/Finish	Kilmahog car parks NN 608 082
Distance	10.5km/6½ miles
Total Ascent	170m/600ft
Time	3hr
Terrain	Dirt track and paths
Max Altitude	Bochastle Hill 240m
Maps	LR 57; Expl 365; Harvey Ben Ledi

The Highland Line is defined by geology. The rocks change suddenly from brown Lowland sediments to the tough grey schist. Kilmahog, no doubt to its great disappointment, is outside the Highlands by just a few hundred metres.

But this isn't merely a walk to the Highlands and back (a feat that could also be achieved by walking the A85 to the 40mph sign at the north edge of the village…) Clear-felling has given the timber track a fine outlook up Loch Lubnaig. And the walk back through birchwoods is a riverside delight, more especially when heavy rains have made the Garbh Uisge noisy enough to drown out the traffic on the main road opposite.

The walk intersects both of the eastern paths up Ben Ledi, and can be used as a preamble to it when the Garbh Uisge car park is full up.

Start from the National Park's Kilmahog car park on the east side of the A821 (or from the Forestry Commission one above the road 200 metres into the walk). Cross to the west side, where the Route 7 cycle path continues ahead – the return part of this walk. For now, turn left on a fenced path that turns up away from the road into a car park. At the far end of this, a dirt path rises to join a forest road.

Follow this as it zigzags uphill. As it does so, it passes a roadstone quarry, which exposes the lumpy puddingstone (or ‘conglomerate’) that shows that we are as yet still in the Scottish Lowlands.

The Falls of Leny

The trees rise on either side as the dirt road passes through the slight col behind Bochastle Hill, but it then emerges into clear-felled ground. In 500 metres, as the road bends left, a cutting exposes the grey schist of the Highlands. The track re-enters trees, and in another 800 metres a path descends from the left, and plunges into the trees down on the right – both branches being waymarked with blue posts. The downhill path could be used to shorten the walk. This path is used by Route 8 descending Ben Ledi's south ridge.

Keep ahead on the track, which crosses a stream and then forks. The lower fork ahead could be taken, but the left branch, doubling back uphill, is more interesting. It soon bends back to the right, and then descends gently through cleared ground.

When you see a well-built path forking up left, look for the descending path, on the right, just before it. Both are waymarked in red. This red-waymarked path is Route 8, heading up to Stank Glen and Ben Ledi. The path is rough and quite steep, above the gorge of Stank Burn. It meets a corner of the lower forest road, but continues ahead downhill above the stream. Finally it emerges onto a lower bend of the forest road.

Head down the forest road until it levels, then take a short path on the left to join a tarred track (the Route 7 cycle path). Follow it ahead, with the wide Garbh Uisge river on your left, for 1.2km, to a crossroads with a bridge on your left. Here the short-cut path arrives from above, out of the trees.

Don't cross the bridge, but take the Route 7 cyclepath on downstream past car parks onto a wide, firm bike path. After 1km it passes the pier of a railway bridge that once crossed the river, and the path is now wider and smoother, being on the old railbed. Just after this, at a stone table, a rough path leads down left to follow the riverbank for views of the Falls of Leny. (The railinged walkway opposite might offer better views, from a convenient car park on the A85; but both car park and walkway have been barricaded off, so we west-bankers have the better of it.)

You can now rejoin the smooth cycle path, or remain on rough little paths alongside the river. After 1km, with houses on the opposite side, river and railbed converge and the rough paths rise back onto the cycleway just before it crosses a small stone bridge. Follow the cycle path for the last 800 metres to the A821.

ROCK NOTES (SEE ALSO APPENDIX A)

The brown ‘puddingstone’ is conglomerate of Old Red Sandstone or Devonian age (400 million years old). It is also seen at Conic Hill (Route 43), at Doon Hill (Route 5), on Callander Craigs (Route 11) and the Menteith Hills (Route 4). The great Caledonian mountain range, formed at the collision of Scotland with England, was then decomposing. The smooth pebbles within the puddingstone were probably an outwash fan below the mountains.

At the roadstone quarry you can see some of the pebbles cut open. Many are of dark andesite lava with pink or white feldspar crystals. Others have irregular white blobs, former bubble-holes refilled with calcite mineral. When the Caledonian mountains formed, the volcanoes were on top and so were the first to get eroded away. Their only remnants are these pebbles – and two bits that sank and so escaped erosion, Ben Nevis and the mountains of Glencoe.

The rock that forms the northern edge of the Lowlands: conglomerate (puddingstone) of the Old Red Sandstone, from the roadstone quarry on Bochastle Hill. The pebbles within it are dark rhyolite lava, some with feldspar crystals, one with gas-bubble holes that have filled up with white calcite. Other pebbles are of near-white quartzite. All were washed down out of Highland mountains that no longer exist.

The grey rock on the north side of the Highland Boundary is noticeably different. It contains no embedded pebbles, it has a slaty cleavage (or tendency to break in slices), and the white quartz within it is bent and broken about. This is Dalradian schist, about three times as old as the puddingstone. The schist was already mangled and old before Scotland and England ever met: the collision mangled it even more to make the deep roots of the new mountain chain.

Around 100 million years after the puddingstone eroded out of the mountains, the combined Scotland–England bit of continent was being stretched north-to-south. The earth's crust broke at Kilmahog, with the northern rocks being pulled away and up, and the southern sliding downwards. Thus the less ancient puddingstone rocks to the south were brought down alongside ancient schist of the mountain roots to the north. Another 300 million years of erosion, plus a final scrub from the Ice Age, has left the two contrasting rocks standing side by side.

On Bochastle Hill you can contrast the lumpy-looking Lowland hills, such as Meall Garbh directly opposite, with the stronger lines of Ben Ledi. On the return part of the walk, the Falls of Leny are in grey slaty schist. In fact, the rocky embankment alongside the A85, just before the northern 40mph limit of Kilmahog, is still showing the grey Highland rocks. An exploration of the Garbh Uisge might show the actual fault line between the two. The strange rocks along the actual boundary can be examined on Route 4 (Aberfoyle to Menteith).

ROUTE 11

Callander: Falls and Crags

Start/Finish	Callander woods NN 634 082
Distance	7km/4½ miles
Total Ascent	300m/1000ft
Time	2½hr
Terrain	Good paths, very minor road, rough path onto Callander Craig
Max Altitude	Queen's Jubilee Cairn 343m
Maps	LR 57; Expl 368; Harvey Ben Ledi

This is a walk of pleasant woodlands, an impressive small gorge and a viewpoint reached without undue effort. Callander Craig, when you get there, is made of lumpy puddingstone: it's the same stuff as Doon Hill at Aberfoyle and Conic Hill above Loch Lomond, and belongs to the Devonian or Old Red Sandstone age. Thus Callander is revealed as being a Lowland town, if only by about 2km.

The exciting footbridge across Bracklinn Falls was washed away in 2005, and rebuilt in 2010.

A side street at the Lowlands end of Callander is opposite the Roman Camp Hotel and is signed for Bracklinn Falls. It runs up to a car park on the left. Start by continuing on foot up the road, past a signpost for a golf course walk, to another car park. Here the wide, smooth path on the right is signed for Bracklinn Falls. After almost 1km it descends earth steps to Bracklinn Falls in their impressive gorge. Rebuilding of the bridge allows an excursion on path and track northwards, to recross by another bridge 2km upstream.

Return to the tarred road, and continue uphill, emerging from the woods. A signposted path on the left leads in 100 metres to the Red Well.

Return to the lane, continuing uphill then level across grassy moorland. As the road bends sharply right, a stony path is on the left under trees. It winds up to a fence corner, and follows the fence onto Callander Craig. A conical cairn marks the summit.