Loch Lomond
Vikings dragged longships overland to reach it, a cold snap in Ice Age science is named after it, and wallabies once hopped about on one of its islands.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Between the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, spanning Argyll and Bute, Dunbartonshire and Stirling
- Length
- About 24 miles (39 km)
- Surface area
- About 71 square km, the largest lake in Great Britain by area
- Deepest point
- Roughly 190 m (620 ft) in the northern basin
- Islands
- More than 20, including Inchmurrin, the largest island in a freshwater loch in the British Isles
- Overlooking peak
- Ben Lomond, 974 m, a Munro on the eastern shore
- Protected status
- Heart of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, Scotland's first national park (2002)
- Famous for
- The song 'The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond' and the West Highland Way along its eastern shore
The loch with two personalities
Loch Lomond is really two lochs in one. The southern end is wide, shallow and scattered with wooded islands. The northern end is a narrow, steep-sided fjord-like trough, plunging to around 190 metres, with mountains dropping straight into the water. That split is no accident. Glaciers gouged the north deeply, as the ice was funnelled through the mountains, but spread out and lost power in the softer lowland rock to the south. It is Britain's biggest lake by surface area. Loch Ness holds more water, but Lomond covers more ground. It is also so closely tied to the Ice Age that geologists named a chilly episode after it: the Loch Lomond Stadial, a final cold snap roughly 12,900 to 11,700 years ago.
Where the Highlands begin, mid-loch
The Highland Boundary Fault slices across the loch, and you can see it in the islands. Inchcailloch, Torrinch, Creinch and Inchmurrin line up almost like stepping stones along the fault line. North of it, the land turns rugged and Gaelic-flavoured. South of it, it softens into farmland and gentle hills. Few places in Scotland let you stand on a Highland-Lowland divide and watch the landscape change in a single view. Inchmurrin is the biggest of the islands, while Inchcailloch is a nature reserve that you can climb for a view along the fault. Inchconnachan has a stranger claim: red-necked wallabies were released there in the 1940s and lived wild among the pines.
The day the Vikings carried their boats uphill
In 1263, King Haakon of Norway's fleet was in the Firth of Clyde, and a raiding party took their ships up Loch Long to Arrochar. The Norse then hauled their boats across the narrow strip of land to Tarbet, whose name means 'isthmus', and launched them on Loch Lomond. The island communities, thinking themselves safe inland, were raided. The Norse sailors had effectively turned a sea-going campaign into a lake-going one. The tale is a reminder that the loch was never a remote backwater. It was a route, a border and a target, with clans such as the Colquhouns and the MacGregors fighting for control of its shores.
High road, low road: the song behind the scenery
'You'll take the high road and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye' is one of the best-known lines in Scottish music. The song is often linked to Jacobite prisoners: one soldier is to be executed, while his comrade is freed and travels home by the high road. The popular reading says the 'low road' is the fairy path the soul takes after death, getting the dead man home to the loch faster than his living friend. It is a legend rather than documented history, but it is a haunting one, and it has made the loch's 'bonnie banks' a global shorthand for homesickness. The village of Luss, on the western shore, later had its own fame, as the setting for the long-running TV drama Take the High Road.
Things to look out for on the shore
The West Highland Way runs along the eastern side, starting out gently and then turning rough and rocky north of Rowardennan, where walkers scramble over tree roots and boulders. Many people use the same stretch as a base for climbing Ben Lomond, whose summit gives a view over the whole length of the water. At Inversnaid, a waterfall tumbles to the loch through the woods that inspired Gerard Manley Hopkins to write his poem 'Inversnaid' in 1881. Nearby are places linked in tradition to Rob Roy MacGregor, who knew the eastern shore well. At Balloch, in the south, you will find the paddle steamer Maid of the Loch, launched in 1953 and the last large passenger paddle steamer built in Britain. She sailed the loch until 1981 and has since been the focus of restoration efforts. Under the surface lives the powan, a whitefish stranded here since the Ice Age. It is one of the rarest freshwater fish in Britain, and only a handful of lochs hold it.
Notable people
- Rob Roy MacGregor
- King Haakon IV of Norway
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Test yourself
Play the UK quizMore to see nearby
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A Victorian tower built by public subscription, topped with a giant stone crown, looks down on the field where William Wallace won his greatest victory.
Stirling Castle
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A king stabbed a rival here and had the body tossed from a window, a rival monarch's siege engine was held back for show, and a nine-month-old queen was crowned in the chapel.