Day 8: Mull to Barstobrick

We had a long day of travelling ahead of us today as we left Mull behind and travelled back towards southern Scotland.  It was rather cloudy and wet when we woke up this morning, so we didn't have much of view from the ferry as we headed towards Oban. It was a smooth trip though, and we arrived back on the mainland around 11am.

We had around 4 hours of driving ahead of us before we reached our destination for the evening, which is just outside Castle Douglas. We wanted to break the journey up a bit, so after the first hour or so of driving we stopped at a place called the Falls of Falloch, towards the top of Loch Lomond.

We were hoping for a bit of a walk here to stretch our legs and get some steps in, but it turned out that the falls weren't very far from the car park. We probably walked for less than 10 minutes before we arrived at the viewpoint  

It was a pretty little waterfall, but there wasn't much scope to walk any further, so soon we were back in the car and driving down the side of Loch Lomond. We had a journey of about 15 miles or so to our second destination of the day, which was in the Argyll forest park.

I'd found a short circular walk which we could do, starting from a forestry car park outside the small village of Succoth. The walk didn't get off to the most promising of starts, leading us steadily uphill on a winding path. But once we got to the top, there were some beautiful views.

We were able to look down to Loch Long, which is a sea loch.

Once we were at the top the path flattened out a bit and was easier to walk on.

We followed the track through the forest, with some great views of the surrounding mountains.

Every so often we got glimpses of the loch through the trees.

Eventually the path began gently sloping downwards.

It led us back down to the valley and we had a pretty walk through the fields.

We could see the village of Succoth where we'd started in the distance.

And we could also look up towards the forest on the hill behind where we'd been climbing.

Once we'd walked back to the car, we drove to a nearby hotel and had the first proper meal out of this holiday  We ate out on the first few days, but only in Wetherspoons, and we've since been completely self-catering on Mull. Tim had an enormous burger and I had what might possibly be the world's cheesiest macaroni cheese!

We were extremely full by the time we'd demolished the food, but still had about 3 hours of driving to get to our final destination. It was a bit of a tedious drive as it involved circumnavigating Glasgow and getting stuck in a lot of traffic. It was close to 7pm when we finally arrived at Barstobrick, near Castle Douglas, where we're staying the night in a wooden lodge.

It's small but comfy, and there's a lovely view out the window  

It looks like it's set in a nice bit of countryside, so we're hoping to explore a little bit before we check out tomorrow morning