JOGLE 6 Day 5 Sun 12 May 13

Departed at 08.45 hrs. Arrived at 18.15. Crianlarich to Rowardenan 20 miles. The weather, well guess what? It’s raining! Glad to be out of the hotel although it’s the one place that serves breakfast early! Not that it makes much difference by the time we got sorted with the bill and poor packed lunches it was 8.45 by the time we left. The route down to Loch Lommond wasn't too bad we had to detour over some boogy moorland to get past some cows on the track that were fighting. I lost my footing and landed up on my *rse! and got a wet *rse in the process. I'm just so glad I didn't take a knee or ankle out. Note to self - do not attempt communication with walking partner on Sundays between 0900hrs and 1000 hrs as the omnibus edition of the Archers is on, instead whistle, sing loudly (out of tune) and pretend you are playing the drums to Muse, The 2nd Law. I certainly wont learn much about the price of sheep's wool or what Eddy Grundy has been up to but at least I can pretend I've been to a Music Festival, its the same as walking in Scotland really - wet and muddy!!  We stopped and had lunch at Doune Bothy which was the only decent shelter on route at 12.45, a good call as I thought we would have been at Inversnaid Hotel by then, little did I know the worst was to come! Walking on the edge of Loch Lommond was a real tough one and in some places you are almost climbing a sheer cliff face and/or exceedingly high step ups and downs, everything was wet, muddy and very slippery, so progress was painfully slow for 3 miles and very exhausting, making sure we didn't lose our footing was a high priority. It took us until 3.15 to reach the Inversnaid Hotel for a brief respite from the cold and wet and a welcome cup of coffee and a warm up (we averaged less than 1 mile an hour). It was here that I discovered another flaw in our moisture control in that the water runs off the bottom of the trousers onto the boot and away, the feet stay dry, however with the high stepping up the trousers rise above the boot and consequently the water drips onto the socks and gets into the boot that way.  I have written to Paramo and made them aware of this. I telephoned Neil and Fiona (our next B & B hosts) who assured us it would take three more hours to walk the 8 miles from Inversnaid to Rowardenan, which it did, we arrived very wet, cold and tired we got stuck into a big meal at the local hotel and then Neil came and picked us up and drove us to the B & B which was good of him. We had a good nights sleep and managed to get everything dried off. The breakfast was good and Ian and I munched into a big bowl of porridge each.