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Villages
in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.

It’s 21:03 over Loch Lomond.
Loch Lomond

Lochside piers and Trossachs gateways.

The villages here grew up round the lochs and the roads into the hills. Luss is a conservation village of stone cottages rebuilt for the estate's slate workers, with a pier and a little beach. Balloch sits where the River Leven leaves Loch Lomond, and Balmaha lies at the foot of Conic Hill on the east shore. In the Trossachs, Aberfoyle became a Victorian resort after Scott's poem, and Callander on the Teith is the gateway town with the Crags above it. At Tarbet, Vikings once dragged their boats across from Loch Long. Several have piers, so leave the car and see the loch from the water.

Luss→
Callander→
Aberfoyle→
Tarbet→
Balloch→
Balmaha→
Village of the day18 hours ago

Callander.

The busy gateway town on the River Teith where the road enters the Highlands, with a Roman fort, the Crags and the Rob Roy Way.

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Lunch16 hours agoLoch LomondSt Mocha, Balmaha300 yardsLoch LomondLuss Fish & Chip Co3.9 milesLoch LomondCoach House Coffee Shop4.0 miles

Lunch near Balmaha.

The three good places closest to it: St Mocha, Balmaha, Luss Fish & Chip Co and Coach House Coffee Shop.

See Balmaha
Did you know14 hours ago

The roof of Luss Parish Church, on the west shore of Loch Lomond, may remember a laird who drowned in the loch.

The present church dates from 1875, though people have worshipped on the site since the time of St Kessog, an Irish missionary. Its hammer-beam roof may commemorate Sir James Colquhoun, the local laird, who drowned on the loch with his men in 1873.

See Luss · Loch Lomond
From our guide10 hours ago

Tarbet.

Tarbet sits on a narrow neck of land between Loch Lomond and the sea loch of Loch Long, and its name comes from the Gaelic for an isthmus. The jagged peaks of the Arrochar Alps rise just behind the village. It is a crossroads, with the A82 heading north up the loch, the A83 climbing west over the Rest and Be Thankful, and a station on the West Highland railway. Cruise boats sail from the pier, and it makes a good base for walkers. Keep an eye out for ospreys over the water.

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Did you know7 hours ago

Jules Verne, the French science-fiction writer, set a novel in an underground mining town beneath Aberfoyle, in the Trossachs.

In 1859 the young Verne made his first journey outside France, travelling with his friend Aristide Hignard to Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine. He wrote the trip up as a travel book, but his publisher turned it down, and it was not published until 1989. Scotland found its way into his novels instead. In 1877 he published The Black Indies, also known as The Child of the Cavern, in which a whole town grows up around an underground lake beneath the mining community of Aberfoyle. Five years later came The Green Ray, set in Scotland too.

See Aberfoyle · Loch Lomond
From our guide5 hours ago

Balloch.

Balloch sits at the southern tip of Loch Lomond, where the River Leven slips out of the loch on its short run to the Clyde, and it is where most visitors first meet the water. The railway reached the village in 1850, and trains from Glasgow still bring day-trippers in. Boats have always been the point of the place, and the old paddle steamer Maid of the Loch is still cared for at the pier. Loch Lomond Shores, by the water, has the SEA LIFE aquarium and the Bird of Prey Centre, handy on a wet day with children.

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Did you know3 hours ago

Luss, on Loch Lomond, was rebuilt in the early 1800s partly to house slate quarry workers.

The Colquhouns, the local landowners who lived at nearby Rossdhu Castle, rebuilt much of the village in the early 1800s. It was partly to house the workers for the nearby slate quarries. Slate no longer features in the local economy.

See Luss · Loch Lomond
From our guide1 hour ago

Aberfoyle.

Aberfoyle is the southern gateway to the Trossachs, the village where the Highland hills begin. It was a modest place until Sir Walter Scott published The Lady of the Lake in 1810, and the visitors who followed turned it into a Victorian resort, with its own railway by 1882. It was a working village too, and by the late 1800s its slate quarries were turning out more than a million slates a year. Today it has shops and cafés, and forest walks start at the Lodge Forest Visitor Centre just up the Duke's Pass.

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From our guideJust now

Luss.

Luss is a village of stone and slate cottages on the western shore of Loch Lomond, with a single street of flower-hung houses running down to a pier and a curve of beach. Ben Lomond fills the view across the water. Most of what you see was built by the Colquhoun family in the early 1800s, partly for workers at their slate quarries, and it is now a conservation village. Paddle from the beach, take a boat trip from the pier, or find a seat in one of the cafés. It gets busy on summer afternoons, so come early or late, when it is at its loveliest.

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