How a Loch in Scotland Taught Me to Travel With Heart

The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

My partner Ady and I have a song we like to sing while hiking and odds are you’ve heard the chorus:

‘You’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road/
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye/
But me and my true love will never meet again/
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.’ 

Ring a bell? Groundskeeper Willie whistles the tune on The Simpsons, it features on an episode of The Office and in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. It’s an old Scottish folk song called Loch Lomond, which has origins in the 18th century when a lost battle with the British Army resulted in many Scots being imprisoned on British soil.

The song is about two soldiers, one who is to be executed and the other who is to be freed. According to Scottish lore, when a person dies on foreign ground, their spirit travels back to their homeland via the ‘low road’, while those who live make the trip back home by foot, via the ‘high road’ over the mountains.

In the song, the dead soldier laments how he will return to Scotland before the free soldier but only in spirit and never to see his lover again. It is a song about separation, longing, and of course, the ineffable Scottish highlands…

The mysterious Loch Lomond is the scene for many a story and song | Photo by Robert Keane on Unsplash

Reuniting on the Banks of Loch Lomond

Ady and I are on a mid-career gap year of sorts, and after a period of separation due to visa issues, we began planning our reunification, the scene of which was to be Loch Lomond, the lake we’d been singing about for years.

Synchronising our arrival at the loch however proves difficult, so our cute reunion starts off rather anticlimactic, on a nondescript street corner under a grey sky in Glasgow instead. Rugged up in winter layers, we haul our packs on a train, making our way northwest, toward the town of Balloch on the mouth of river Leven which flows out into the mighty loch.

We get off at the penultimate stop, Alexandria, for – in the spirit of the song – we want to walk to Loch Lomond on foot. We find a lonely path along the river bank and start walking against a wild wind. It’s six degrees, the rain is coming in sideways and the river is seriously choppy. I’m uncomfortably damp but something about this pilgrimage of sorts induces a cheery spirit.

It was certainly not warm!

The river widens gradually and we know we’re close to our destination when moored boats start competing for river real estate. We walk up to a point where the river mouth opens up, looking for that classic view of the loch before us, fringed by those enigmatic highland hills…but it never comes.

My glasses are rain-spattered and a thick fog has settled in, making it impossible to see past the first few metres of water lapping at the shore. We’re here but this isn’t the moment we were seeking. Dispirited, we turn and walk along the western shore for a bit. There’s a rough path through the foreshore, scrub littered with takeaway coffee cups and miscellaneous plastic waste.

There are always moments like these on travels, when the expectation of an experience and its reality couldn’t be more alien from each other. I thought we’d both set eyes on Loch Lomond, take in its beauty and spontaneously burst into song. Instead, we just dawdle by the shore, shivering, wet, and silent from the realisation of what a non-event this is becoming.

The said dawdling

Eventually, we head back into town and find a pub in which to pass the rest of the afternoon with some single malt Scottish whiskey distilled from the pristine waters of other highland water bodies.

The next day, we awake in Alexandria to a weak sun peeking through gauzy clouds. Encouraged by the hint of rays, we dress quickly and walk back into Balloch again. Dinghies moored at the mouth of the river are partially submerged and a thick layer of leaf litter blown into the water by yesterday’s winds now slides tectonically over the river surface.

We cross a bridge to join a shady path on the eastern bank of the river this time. We walk on and the path veers sharply right, widening around a bulging boundary where the river opens and we catch our first unbroken line of sight all the way to the pale blue sky, touching a watery horizon in the distance.

There it is, shimmering silently, Loch Lomond. The river bank gives way to small pebble beaches that the loch waters lap up to. I walk down to a beach and crouch to touch the water. Pebbles crunch under my boots. Everything is still. What seemed like a silly whim we had the privilege of playing out now took on a note of awe and seriousness.

Watching the bravest dog ever from Loch Lomond’s banks

I learnt it from Ady, who learnt it from a Scottish teacher he had when he was younger, and over years of hiking together, it wedged itself so deep in my psyche that the loch held a mythic quality in my mind. It was surreal to actually be here and experience it as a real place I could see, feel, and touch.

Ady walks up behind me and we meet again right there at the water’s edge. He crouches down as I flip on the front camera of my phone, holding it out to record our performance to no one. And we start singing. At one point I break into a harmony and surprise myself because harmonizing has never been my forte.

When we finish, everything returns to silence and we hug. I then suddenly remember a dream I’d had the previous night; it was pitch black and the harmony I sang moments before was teaching itself to me. That was how I knew it. It was like Loch Lomond was singing with me.

Ady and I spent that day just walking and talking around the loch. Its beaches, water, and the highland hills became the backdrop of a day of simple reconnection, the memory of which I cherish deeply.

The mysterious setting for our conversations

Journeying Intentionally

At a time when travel – for us lucky ones – is more accessible than ever, it can be easy to move across our earth carelessly untethered to a sense of purpose that counterbalances the advantage we take of it. It’s a tension I feel acutely every day.

We’re five months into our travels and while the highs are high, the lows of a trip like this can be incredibly low. Existential uncertainty and financial anxiety are close friends. The question of whether I’ve been stupidly frivolous giving up a meaningful job in Melbourne nags at me most nights.

And perhaps the most difficult thing is that I’m missing important events in the lives of people I care about deeply for…what exactly?

On days when I don’t know the answer to that question, ennui sets in and it feels like a haughty, uncomfortable privilege to gallivant around the world. Afterall, we’re not soldiers leaving home to risk lives and loves on foreign soil – we’re people who go to other places for no other reason than because we want to.

While it started off as a cute idea, our journey to Loch Lomond became one that clarified that our travels are most justifiable when we partake in them with meaningful intention and considered purpose. It also taught us the verses of Loch Lomond we didn’t previously know and which will now be sung on future walks together wherever we are. And it renewed our commitment to journeying together, witnessed by Loch Lomond itself.

Read more: Loch Lomond Scotland: Where The Highlands Meet The Lowlands