Qualla: Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abubakr Hussain, CC BY-SA 2.5. Oh, ye'll tak the high road, and I'll tak the low road. A song first published around 1841 made these particular twenty-three miles of fresh water the property of every person who has ever felt homesick for somewhere they may never see again. One story holds that a Jacobite soldier wrote it during the bitter retreat from England in 1745-46. Another says it came from a Scotsman awaiting execution in enemy captivity, the low road being the fairy path by which a soul could return home to the place it had loved. Whichever version you trust, the song has fixed Loch Lomond in the imagination of strangers, and approaching its bonnie banks today, you find a place that earns the sentiment without straining for it.

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Image: Abubakr Hussain | CC BY-SA 2.5

Loch Lomond: An Inland Sea Strung with Islands

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The loch is enormous. Its waters fill a long trough carved by glaciers along the Highland boundary fault, the geological seam where lowland Scotland meets the mountains proper. To the south, the loch broadens into something more like a bay, scattered with low wooded islands. To t...

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Image: Colin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Loch Lomond: The Beavers Return

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. In January 2023 a family of beavers came home to Loch Lomond after four centuries of absence. RSPB Scotland released an adult pair and their five offspring into the southeastern shallows under licence from NatureScot. The family had been translocated from Tayside, where their dam...

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Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch Lomond: Crannogs and Longships

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Spenceley, CC BY-SA 2.0. People first came to these shores around 5,000 years ago, in the Neolithic, and left traces at Balmaha, Luss, and Inchlonaig. They built crannogs - artificial islands of timber and stone - out in the shallows. One such crannog off the island of Clairinsh is known as 'The Kitchen'...

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Image: Andrew Spenceley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch Lomond: The Paddle Steamer at Balloch

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sigurdas, CC BY 2.0. Loch Lomond has been a tourist destination for so long that when James Boswell and Samuel Johnson visited the islands in 1773, Boswell remarked it would be pointless to attempt a description - the loch was already too famous to need one. Today the southern shore at Balloch still ...

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Image: Sigurdas | CC BY 2.0

Loch Lomond: Why the Song Will Not Let Go

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a reason Loch Lomond has become shorthand for Scotland itself. Brigadoon borrows it. The Adventures of Tintin gave Captain Haddock a whisky brand named for it. A 1998 Bollywood film used the banks as backdrop for a song sequence. The original 1841 lyric works because it ...

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Image: Colin | CC BY-SA 4.0