“Next morning, Nell and I were up at 5.30 to climb a hill opposite the hotel, hoping the view from the top would make it worthwhile. What a climb! Up and up for one and a half hours. But what a view – miles of Loch Lomond and its islands in the distance, snow-capped mountains, shrouded in mist, and there Tarbert nestling by the Loch.”
Jeans photos taken from the hill above the Tarbert Hotel:
Jean’s daughter Maree, worked and lived at the Ardgartan Youth Hostel (Scottish Youth Hostels Association) on the shores of Loch Long, just 3 miles from Arrochar/Tarbert on and off from 1997 to late 2000. 45-odd years after Jean’s travels when Maree first took up residence there in August 1997, Jean recalled passing through (and her climb up the hill opposite Tarbert Hotel where she would have spied the hostel at Ardgartan below) .
“Then started the grandest part of the trip – by loch after loch to Inverness, every loch seems grander and more beautiful than the last. From Tarbert, through Arrochar on Loch Long*, to Inverary on Loch Fyne, Oban, then instead of staying the night in Fort William, stopped at a little place opposite Ballachulish on Loch Leven – just a hotel called Loch Leven Hotel. We went by ferry over Loch Leven at Ballachulish instead of driving round 19 miles past past Glencoe and Kinlochleven at the end of the loch. It proved to be one of the best hotels we’d struck. The keeper was a real highlander, a Scottish Nationalist and jovial sort, and sporting a kilt”
From Jean’s letter to her sister Mary, written in Stonehaven on 19 June.
