Category: Loch Katrine

Scots pines at Loch Katrine

For a change, we decided to take a scenic drive through the Trossachs and up to Loch Katrine for a an afternoon wander along the loch shores.

Loch Katrine turned out to be extremely quiet, with only a handful of cars from walkers parked in the massive car park. Unlike to usual hustle and bustle with busloads of tourists, the firmly shut tourist shops, cafe’s and boats looking more like a recently abandoned ghost town than a tourist hot spot.

We wandered out and back along the slightly uninspiring tarmac road along the North shore of the loch on what turned out to be a very bleak day. The Scots pines on the South shore and the winter colours of steep slopes of Ben Venue providing some interest.

The SS Sir Walter Scott

The SS Sir Walter Scott is a small steamship that was built in 1899 at Dumbarton that has provided pleasure cruises and ferry services on Loch Katrine for well over a century. The steamer is the only surviving screw steamer in regular passenger service in Scotland and is named after the writer Sir Walter Scott, who set his 1810 poem Lady of the Lake, and his 1818 novel Rob Roy around Loch Katrine.

I wholeheartedly agree with David Ritchie, who took the below photograph of the SS Sir Walter Scott back in 2006, that recent restorations have unfortunately ruined the steamer’s looks.

The SS Sir Walter Scott in 2006, courtesy of David Ritchie