Up the junction

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We decided to press on this morning and to break the journey only once we were north of Glasgow. On the terrace of the Duck Bay Hotel, overlooking Loch Lomond, we had sandwiches in the warm afternoon sun. There's an old Scots legend that if anyone dies outside the country, their soul returns via the low road: hence the song about Loch Lomond. Of two soldiers, one is condemned to death; he will reach Scotland before the survivor, but will never again meet his true love on the bonnie banks of the loch.

As we drove on, we passed three police vans by the loch. A tent had been erected on the shore. Later, we read in the Scotsman that a woman's body had been recovered from the water.

Our staging post today is Crianlarich. It's a road junction, with a terrace of pebble-dash and slate cottages, corrugated iron huts, a Great War memorial and a pub. The hotel is at the junction itself. It's proud of having been turned around. Until a couple of years ago, it had a dayglo exterior and catered mainly for coach parties. Now, it's winning awards for its restaurant. The car park, across the road on an S bend, doubles as a stopping place for families using its public toilet block. We wait on the kerb as cars and camper vans swing out in our path.

The polite and attentive receptionist is distracted from checking us in by a woman who is determined to know the way to Lochgoilhead. When the receptionist prints directions for her, she takes this as her cue to ensure she has full particulars: how far is it, where's Tarbet, which way do you turn? She informs anyone who's interested that they've just come from that way and they'll have to go back. Her husband appears and asks where Lochgoilhead is. She says it's beyond Arrochar. "Told you," he says, and stomps out, enabling us to get our room key.

We have to ring a friend of the owner of the cottage in Dornie, to agree an arrival time for tomorrow. There's no mobile phone service. It's years since either of us has used a public phone box. After hesitating outside the booth and overcoming our trepidation enough to enter, we have to study the instructions. There's a minimum call charge of 60p; this will buy us an ample thirty minutes, but we only have a pound coin, which the machine rejects several times before grudgingly swallowing it. There's no answer, so we leave a message and say we'll call back, using about twenty seconds of our purchased time.

For refreshment, we can choose between the hotel and the Station Tea Room, which has an uninterrupted view of washing on the line outside the Londis store. We walk back to the hotel, feeling overdressed in our everyday clothes: most of the pedestrians in Crianlarich are in shorts and walking boots.

The hotel really has been transformed. In the capacious dining room, you can imagine how tourists used to be seated at long tables and fed slices of fried haggis and tatties. Now, it's been made intimate by the arrangement of banquettes, and there are sofas by the fireplace. Above the panelling, the walls have been lightened by the generous application of white paint. They're hung with deers' heads, antlers and fishing tackle. The staff are enthusiastic and justly proud of the food, wine and malt whisky. We have mussels, cullen skink (a local fish soup) and roe deer, with a Rioja and Islay's smoky Lagavulin.

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