Monday 14 October 2024--I suggested to Ron that we take a walk up Conic Hill today. If he raised an eyebrow, I didn't notice. It's not a big hill--the elevation gain from Balmaha, on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond, is about a thousand feet. Nor is it a very long walk, about a mile and a quarter each way. Those numbers should have set off my alarm bells--a thousand-foot rise in 6500 feet is an average grade of about 15%, not a big deal for the hordes of reasonably-fit daytrippers who make the trek on any reasonably nice day, but that's not me. A few hundred yards up the trail from the Balmaha Visitor Centre, where we parked the car, I have already stopped several times to let my heart rate drop a bit, and we're not anywhere near the steepest bits yet. The sight of the first set of stairs does me in. I tell Ron I'll meet him back at the car. I'm dismayed at how far I've let my fitness level drop. How did I get here? I tend to blame two years of sitting around doing nothing during the pandemic, but the decline set in long before that, when my mother's health started to deteriorate, my responsibilities increased, and I no longer found time to go to the gym. I keep telling myself I'll get back at it, but I haven't found the motivation. The issues with my feet haven't helped, either. In the meantime, I have, quite to my surprise, gotten old.

Ron finds me snoozing in the car a short time later. His trek to the summit of Conic Hill is his third, the others coming early in his two transits of the West Highland Way. (You can find Ron's account of hiking the West Highland Way, including video reports, at his website, Drookit Dram. Conic Hill features early in the Day 2 video.) We drive up past Drymen to have a look at the village of Gartmore, where I'm hoping to have an afternoon pint at the Black Bull. It doesn't open until 5:00, so we're out of luck. I'd have booked a room there if the price had been comparable to the Clachan--it looked like an interesting place, purchased not long ago by a community trust. Gartmore is comparable in size to Drymen, but the latter seems more tourist-friendly with more services, owing, I suppose, to its proximity to the West Highland Way and Loch Lomond. We're happy enough to go back there for our dinner and evening pints. I'm happier still when my errant duffel arrives via courier from the airport.