Milngavie to Dumgoyne Circular (via the Campsie Dene Trail & the West Highland Way)

This is another Milngavie loop starting at the train station and heading up the steep Mugdock Road to Mugdock Village. Again, after breathing in the views from this little summit, we follow the Old Mugdock Road down (everything that goes up...) to Strathblane. Here, take the Glasgow Road (A81) about half a kilometre along to Blanefield, and on your right you should see a lane rising up into the foothills of the fells. This is the Campsie Dene Trail, the old waterworks route that still pipes fresh water down to Glasgow from Loch Katrine. There are some fine water stations along the way hidden amongst the foliage. The path is car-free, and offers some sublime views across Quinloch Muir and the Blane Valley up towards the Highland range.

At the field where a path leads up to Dumgoyne, you can shackle your bike to a fence and take the earthen staircase up the very steep Dumgoyne to its 427 metre summit. It's probably no more than an hour there and back, but it is like climbing a few hundred flights of stairs! Really opens the mind up, so by the time that the view hits you, you are so spaced out that you might as well be looking in a mirror! (but not the kinds of mirrors we're used to).

The map is not the territory, a Polish philosopher once said. Perhaps then, I am...!

Instead of going back the way we came, once descended from Dumgoyne, we can carry along the Campsie Dene path for a couple of hundred metres until we find a path leading downwards onto the A81. Take a left onto the main road and then at the distillery take a right into its warehouses. This will lead you to a farm gate and another hundred metres or so to the West Highland Way path. Here, take a left and head past the bosky plug of Dumgoyach, where if you look to the field on the left you might see a row of 5 standing stones thought to date from the Middle Bronze Age.

[On the other side of this field - it can be reached by a path before you go round Dumgoyach - is the wonderful Duntreath Castle, now a private residence].

Continue up the rocky WHW path, and out onto the B821 where we follow the road a few hundred metres to the left before rejoining the WHW past Craigallian Loch (look out for the campfire dedication to the wanderers of old) and back down to Milngavie via the glorious Mugdock Wood. All in all, it's an excellent and invigorating route (with or without the hike up Dumgoyne) that takes about 3 or 4 hours depending on whether you decide to go up Dumgoyne or not.

The Craigallian Campfire.