Loch Katrine from the top of Ben A'an, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, Scotland

Loch Katrine from the top of Ben A'an

This picture of Loch Katrine from the top of Ben A'an is for sale.

It comes as a canvas, a framed print, a framed mounted print or an acrylic.

Why not take a look at my other pictures of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

The view along Loch Katrine towards the setting sun, from the summit of Ben A'an, in The Trossachs, Scotland.

The hill is small by Scottish standards - only 1491 feet - but the view from the top more than makes up for that. The hill has a distinctive, almost Tolkeinesque, conical peak, and the climb up is steep, but takes only an hour or so.

The climb up is up the eastern side of the hill, with impressive views back across Loch Achray. But on reaching the summit, the scenery opens up in front of you, right along the length of Loch Katrine towards Ben Lomond and the Arrochar Alps.

The mountain was originally named Ben An Binnean (the small pointed peak), but was shortened to Ben A'an by Sir Walter Scott in The Lady of the Lake, his epic and influential poem whose publication in 1810 kickstarted the Scottish tourism industry back in the early nineteenth century.

And now, to issue from the glen, 
No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, 
Unless he climb, with footing nice 
A far projecting precipice. 
The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, 
The hazel saplings lent their aid; 
And thus an airy point he won, 
Where, gleaming with the setting sun, 
One burnished sheet of living gold, 
Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, 
In all her length far winding lay, 
With promontory, creek, and bay, 
And islands that, empurpled bright, 
Floated amid the livelier light, 
And mountains, that like giants stand, 
To sentinel enchanted land. 
High on the south, huge Benvenue 
Down to the lake in masses threw 
Crags, knolls, and mountains, confusedly hurled, 
The fragments of an earlier world; 
A wildering forest feathered o’er 
His ruined sides and summit hoar, 
While on the north, through middle air, 
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare. 

Several years before, Loch Katrine was also visited by William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. His poem Stepping Westward recounted their trip on Loch Katrine, westwards towards Inversnaid and Loch Lomond:

“What, you are stepping westward?”–“Yea.”
‘T would be a wildish destiny,
If we, who thus together roam
In a strange land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;
And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny:
I liked the greeting; ‘t was a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake:
The salutation had to me
The very sound of courtesy:
Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.