Rowardennan

The road end and the Clansman

The public road ends at Rowardennan. You drive the B837 north from Drymen, follow Loch Lomond's eastern shore for twelve miles, and then the tarmac stops, water on one side and the lower slopes of Ben Lomond rising on the other. Balloch is the practical railhead at the south end of the loch, and no bus comes nearer than Balmaha, seven miles south; beyond that you arrive by car, on foot, or by boat.

At the road end stands the Rowardennan Hotel, whose Clansman Bar keeps a log fire going and points its windows at the loch and the mountains to the north. The building has been an inn since 1696, when it stopped being a farmhouse, and by 1850 it was taking steamboat passengers bound for the summit. The kitchen leans Scottish and changes with the season; recent plates have included haggis bon bons, chilli and garlic prawns, Cajun chicken salad, lentil soup and a vegan haggis. Dogs are welcome on a lead and off the furniture, and the bar keeps water bowls and treats behind it. There is a beer garden with the same loch-and-mountain view, and an outdoor play area for children.

Supplies and the lochside lodge

Next to the hotel is the Rowardennan Shop, which opened in 2025 and sells the things a walker forgets: snacks, soft drinks, toiletries, camping supplies, homemade sandwiches and souvenirs. Among the souvenirs is the Midge Globe, in which a West Highland Way walker is set upon by midges. It is sold in memory of the man who invented it, Fraser Allison.

A little further along sits Rowardennan Lodge, a mid-19th-century shooting lodge now run as a youth hostel. It has bargeboarded gables, fish-scale slate roofs, barley-sugar posts and a round tower with a conical roof, and its reception doubles as a small shop with pre-booked breakfasts, evening meals and a licence for local beer and wine. Picnic tables look out over the water. The hostel jetty is where the seasonal waterbus to Tarbet ties up, carrying dogs and bikes on the days it runs.

Paths up, south and north

Many visitors come to walk. Ben Lomond is Scotland's most southerly Munro, and its main path leaves the car park for a hard eight-mile round trip of about 3,050 feet of ascent, four to six hours up and down through forest and open hillside to the 974-metre top. On a clear day the view reaches Ben Nevis, the Ochils and the Pentlands, and out west to Mull, Islay and Arran. For something gentler, the Ardess Hidden History Trail is a mile-long loop starting around 700m north of the car park, threading oak woodland past old building footings and a replica cruck-framed house. The West Highland Way passes through too: south seven miles to Balmaha through wooded coves and sandy beaches, or north eight undulating miles to Inversnaid, past the Rowchoish bothy and the ancient oaks of Craigrostan.

Shielings and a living memorial

The hills here carry their history lightly. Rob Roy MacGregor owned the Ardess lands for two years before he was outlawed, and the remains of more than 40 shieling buildings are mapped where families once drove cattle to summer pasture. In 1995 the approximately 4,000-hectare National Memorial Landscape around Ben Lomond was officially designated a war memorial; a low circular sculpture by Doug Cocker sits near the shore, framing Ben Vorlich across the water.

The quiet at the end of the road

If you want more than one hill, Balmaha is about six and a half miles back south, with the National Park visitor centre, the short pull up Conic Hill, and boats out to the wooded island of Inchcailloch and the graves of Rob Roy's ancestors. But the pull at Rowardennan is the quiet at the end of the road, where the tables face the loch and the mountain does the rest. Alasdair Eckersall, who has spent years ranging it, put it plainly: "You just get a feel for the mountains as living, breathing places."