50th Birthday Trip part 4 – Loch Lomond

Part 1 link, Part 2 link and Part 3 link

Sunday 5th June – We travelled across from Gleneagles to Drymen, near Loch Lomond. My husband had booked us into a fabulous Glamping Cabin, called Elysium, which was amazing. It had an outside seating area, outside woodburning stove and even an outside bathtub! Inside the pod was a bathroom, bedroom/living/kitchen area. Everything we could need and a lovely welcome basket of sweet goodies, cheese and a bottle of Prosecco.

It was a lovely evening and the owners are a sculptor and his wife, so in the evening we had a walk around their sculpture trail which had some pretty cool installations.

We had bought some butter, cheese, crackers and chutney from a nearby farm shop and just had those for dinner. We did use the outdoor bath, even though it is isolated I did put a swimsuit on. We tried to make smores but oh my they are sickly. We tried with ginger snaps and with digestive biscuits, seeing as Graham crackers aren’t sold here.

Monday 6th (my 50th birthday!) – We decided to go to Blair Drummond Safari Park, which we hadn’t been to for years. We drove into the monkey area, which has a million warnings about the damage the monkeys may do to your car, so I was a little nervous. Luckily there was a coach in front of us that they seemed much more interested in hanging off its wing mirrors and jumping on its roof! So we managed to get out without the car being attacked. The weather was nice and we had a wander around, ate some freshly cooked donuts, shared a sandwich and crisps and had a nice day.

We drove to the shores of Loch Lomond and had a drink at the Oak Tree Inn, that we stayed at many years ago. We took a couple of photos and then headed off as we had booked a table in the Clachman Inn in Drymen for dinner. This is the oldest licensed inn in Scotland, licensed in 1734! We both ordered pizza and skipped dessert as we still had some cakes left from our afternoon tea.

I was very sleepy in the evening as we sat by the fire and kept snoozing, so we didn’t have a bath that night. It was a lovely relaxing day though and it was good to unwind from all the hectic travels of the last 11 days.

Tuesday 7th – it was time to head back up to the Highlands. We had a little stop for a drink and brunch in Aberfoyle and watched a shepherd sheering some rare breed sheep and watched a sheepdog herding some ducks around an assault course!

We also stopped off the A9 at Stewart’s Dairy where they had all these crazy goats. It isn’t goat’s milk ice cream thank goodness.

A lovely way to celebrate my half a century birthday!