Day 61: Glengoyne

Distance: 8.2 miles
Amateur bloggers: 2

Well, while Dawn and Al are unstoppable walking machines who can nonchalantly find their way across mis-mapped, obstacle laden, foreign land, they seem to have little skill (or perhaps standards) when it comes to choosing guest bloggers.

It's Jan & Michael (the Edinburgh to Inverness interlopers) you've got for today while Dawn and Al get a well deserved day off from blogging if not walking. Will do our best to meet the high bar they set, but please don't expect this to be a blistering report (though a big thanks! for the much appreciated help to Julia@Knit Wits).


Low point of the day: breakfast. Al was only able to scare up limited amounts of 'cold breakfast' as his usual "round 2" of hot foods was not offered. Good thing there was 'only' 8 or 9 miles to go today (their normal mileage before lunch).

High point: hard to call. Lots of competition. Today's weather turned out to be clear blue skies and over 21 degrees (honestly!).



That should have been a shoe-in for high point if the day didn't also include a tour of the picturesque Glengoyne Distillery in Dumgoyne. Described by some as "The best whiskey tour in Scotland." We can agree as it's certainly the best one we've had so far.


But we're getting ahead of ourselves. More on Glengoyne and their wonderfully friendly staff in a moment.

The walk today was on a flat rails to trails path (which we think Al would classify as Type 1 - his favorite for being well marked and generally easily followed on the ground). It wandered through the back of some of the northern suburbs of Glasgow and a number of sheep farms where we photographed cute lambs while Al salivated.


The topography changed from flat to rolling farmland to the foothills of Campsie Fells, which continue along the beginning of the West Highland Way.


It was still morning when we dropped down into Strathblane, and we easily found our destination, The Kirkhouse Inn, just down the street from this small church.


This early arrival was all part of the plan to visit a real Scotland distillery. Glengoyne is said to be one of just 14 distilleries that are today Scottish owned out of a hundred or so in the country. They used to make their scotch from this waterfall


But now they need to pipe in water as they brew over one million liters every year. We were already looking forward to doing a wee bit of sampling following David's interesting tour of the how and whys at Glengoyne, but when we learned their casks are made only from Oregon(!) Pine, we were totally sold.


Natalie was our entertaining guide for a special tasting in a small sitting room, where we enjoyed learning a bit of whiskey history and sampling some Highland single malts including a 21 year old bottle. Like.


While the distillery's shop reminded us a bit of being in Napa Valley, the shop keeper Alistair was 100% Scottish and very charming. He could have easily sent us away loaded up with all things Glengoyne if it wasn't for Larry's law, "don't be the hikers with the shopping bags!"


Tomorrow begins the West Highland Way! The walk from Strathblane to Balmaha is expected to be about 13 'Al miles' :)

Location:Glasgow Rd,,United Kingdom