Lockdown Leaf Peeping in Scotland’s Loch Lomond and Beyond.

Loch Lomond is one of the most scenic and well-traversed attractions in Scotland. But is it a good spot for checking out the fall foliage? And is it worth it to visit Loch Lomond during lockdown?

For us, the answer was a big fat YES because we hadn’t been ANYWHERE in Scotland besides Edinburgh despite being in Scotland for five months!

We could have had a lot of the expectations riding on this trip. Luckily Ivan and I had an eye-opening experience in Cyprus that made us realize that having expectations about our adventures made them less fun.

This attitude came in great handy when we arrived at the car rental company to discover that we had to pay an additional £140 pounds because I entered my husband’s name on the booking as the driver when I was actually the one paying.

Hot tip: When renting a car online through a travel agency make sure that the person who pays for the car rental is the same as the driver and that that person has a credit card for the deposit. Expect to pay over £2,000 pounds for that.

Day One: East Loch Lomond

After an hour of waiting at the car rental place to sort out our payment, we were off!

I’ll be real, we weren’t 100% sure about where we were going because although I read a ton of stuff about where to see fall foliage, it was a challenge finding good resources since Europeans don’t seem so gong ho on leaf-peeping. Luckily the Scotsman and the Loch Lomond & Trossachs official website published some blogs on the best trails for autumn. We later realized that The National Trust has a good list of autumn hikes.)

We wanted to go to Conic Hill because it had a great view and the weather was nice even if it wasn’t the best autumn leaf lookout point. But on the way, we got lost and ended up parking right by the lake and taking a wee wander there.

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Then we found our way to Conic Hill. We didn’t hike all the way up to the hill because we figured that the view would be pretty similar at the very top as it was at the point we reached.

This was definitely a Scottish hike, the kind of hike where you are exposed and you have to scramble up some rocks and there is water here and there. On this day it was particularly muddy. I still really enjoyed it. It definitely wasn’t a “fall-hike” though and that was OK.

Ivan, on the other hand, carried a book bag and laced my coat under the straps, making him look like a bit of a sherpa.

He was over it pretty quickly.

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Realizing our leaf-peeping obsession wouldn’t get its fix unless we headed to the woods, we decided to go a little bit further into the Loch Lomond & Trossachs Park. I had some destinations saved in my Google Maps. I can’t tell you which one I was trying to go to but what happened is that we took a wrong turn in the town of Aberfoyle and ended up going on Duke’s Pass. This turned out to be a fantastic accident as the fall foliage was far greater on this road and we eventually connected with something called the Three Locks Scenic Drive.

 

This drive was perfect for the situation we were in. In all honesty, Ivan is not as interested in hiking as I am, and two hikes in a day is a little much for him – plus you know that whole sherpa thing earlier.

The scenic drive was perfect for him because we were both able to see lots of beautiful trees and lakes without having to get out of our car. Of course, there are many places where you can get out, and the park was very well organized.

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After that, we thought it was a good idea to head to the hotel because it was getting dark. In order to drive to the hotel, we had to drive on a single road that widened at certain points so that oncoming traffic and you could pass each other. However, there really weren’t that many other people on the road.

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The man working at the hotel was really nice. We were the only people there due to lockdown.

It was nice to be able to eat in a restaurant which, at that time, was only allowed in Scotland if the restaurant was in a hotel.

However, you’re STILL not allowed to drink alcohol in said restaurant. (This point is still sadly true in much of Scotland as of today’s writing.)

Day Two: West Trossachs Park, Callander, The Hermitage National Trust, & Parking Woes

We got up to a very big breakfast. We went in search of a hiking trail based on my list. A popular one for the fall was Loch Ard. However, the parking lot was jampacked. Luckily we got to stop by the lake for a hot minute to take a photo.

Our host at the hotel had told us that if we went eastward we would be able to avoid rain. This didn’t make sense as the main reason we went on this trip was to explore more of the west, but we had to admit that if it was raining we wouldn’t really be able to enjoy it that much. We tried to find another trail and again weren’t successful in Aberfoyle due to no available parking.

Hot tip: Aberfoyle has a gas station that’s not listed on Google Maps and IS open on Sunday despite people saying otherwise.

Heading towards the end of the Trossachs after two failed attempts to find a trail, we passed through the lively little town of Callander.

As we continued, we once again found ourselves on an extremely tiny one-way road that was meant to be used by both traffic directions. There was more than one occasion where ourselves or the other car had to back up into the passing zone in order to let us get through.

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We eventually were on an open road with lots of hills, the very thing we were trying to avoid because of the rain.

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At one point Ivan even suggested that we park illegally in the area where there was hill hiking. We were desperate!

Hill hiking is the most popular type of hiking in Scotland. It’s beautiful and has its perks BUT NOT ON A RAINY DAY because there are no trees to stop the entire trail from becoming a mudbath.

So yeah, we didn’t do that.

We went into Callander and got some food.

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For a mountain town, Callander was quite lively. I will be honest that I was pretty shocked by how few facilities and restaurants exist in the Loch Lomond area. Callander had way more to offer in that area than anywhere else we’d been so far.

We had a lovely lunch in a cafe and ironically found some gorgeous leaves to take photos of in front of a the parking lot! On this trip, parking lots were scared at this point…and this one also had a bathroom!

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By that time it was 2 o’clock and we still hadn’t hiked at all. A year ago this would’ve been really bothersome to me and would’ve been making me anxious. But not after Cyprus 😋.

We were really going with the flow and I guess the flow was saying that we weren’t supposed to hike that day because everybody else deserved to be on those trails more than us. That is the most hippie sentence I’ve ever written.

Luckily for us though we made the decision to go eastward.

We drove a little over an hour to go to The Hermitage, a forest about an hour north of Edinburgh. I kept checking the crowd/parking situation on Google Maps and it said that it was very busy, which is not something you want to see during the pandemic.

Luckily the crowds had thinned out by the time we arrived and we found parking! We walked through the forest and were amazed at the colors. The leaves in this area were definitely peaking more than near Loch Lomond.

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The most impressive thing was the beautiful waterfall surrounded by the fall leaves. I thought back on all the times I did crazy long hikes in Thailand just to see a pitiful trickle of a waterfall. I think I will be ruined for such waterfall viewings for the rest of my life after seeing waterfalls in Scotland.

As we exited the forest near the end of the hike we saw that we could continue through a valley where you can see mountains and lots of farmland.

It was great because I could also see clusters of trees that were changing color.

At this point it was around 4 o’clock and daylight savings had started that morning meaning that the sun would go down by 5 o’clock for the first time.

Noooo.

So we decided that it was time to go home.

Honestly, we were really happy to be home.

As much as I love adventure and need it to thrive, it’s been really nice to have a place to be happy to come back to.

This has been missing in my life for the past six years, with the exception of my mom’s house, and I’m really happy that me and my new family member, my husband, now have a place to call our own.