Walking, scrambling Loch Lomond and the Trossachs

• Location
• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Maps
• Further Reading

Some people enjoy exploring in mountains that are poorly mapped or not mapped at all. They should stay away from the Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, as it has been excellently mapped – four times over. The mapping in this book is from the Ordnance Survey’s Landranger series at 1:50,000. For lower-level walks this book’s mapping may well be all you need. For mountain walks, however, it’s advisable to have a larger map that shows escape routes (and the other glen you end up in when you come down the wrong side of the hill).

For detailed exploration of crags and corries and pathless boulder slopes you will be helped by the extra contour detail at 1:25,000 scale. The Harvey maps are ideal; they are beautifully clear and legible, mark paths where they actually exist on the ground, and do not disintegrate when damp. They also overlap conveniently. Five Harvey sheets – Arrochar Alps, Crianlarich, Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, Ben Venue – cover the National Park apart from Cowal (Walks 70 to 73) and the Luss Hills (Walks 47 and 48).

The Harvey maps mark fences and walls on the open hill, but not on the lower ground; so if you’re planning complicated valley walks you may prefer the Expl maps, also at 1:25,000 scale. They are bulkier and less robust than the Harvey ones, and the contour lines are less legible, but if Harveys hadn’t done it bette, they’d be excellent maps. Sheets 364 (Loch Lomond North) and 365 (Trossachs) cover most of the ground, with 347, 360 and 363 for outlying western and southern walks.

Harveys also offer an Outdoor Atlas of the Lomond and Trossachs National Park at 1:40,000 scale. It’s spiral bound to fit into a map pocket, and has useful overlap between the pages. Compared with the four Landranger maps it’s slightly lighter in weight, appreciably more detailed, and half the price. Not everybody will like it, but I’ve used it for researching and walking the routes in this book.