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Day 3 Spent the afternoon with the Dean park rangers doing a community clean and litter pick of the country park.

Having recently moved to the area, I have taken every opportunity to explore Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. My preferred means of exploration is hiking, and so I set off to the Arrochar Alps on one of my days off. Leaving early in the morning, I managed to make it up Beinn Ime before summiting Beinn Narnain. Beinn Narnain overlooks a stunning sea-loch, Loch Long. I have spent the last two years living in the Cairngorms National Park, and have taken great interest in the differences between the two national parks. A mountain-top view of a sea-loch is arguably the most stark difference, but during my time here I hope to gain a better understanding as to how the Cairngorms and Trossachs differ.

Another team hike during the induction week of the training course. This time we took a shorter, though no less scenic, hike up Ben A'an. During a section of this hike we were made aware of the many features of a machine-built path, before passing through a hand-built section. As we are learning how to build paths by hand the contrast in path-type seen on this route was very interesting.

The 2018 Upland Pathwork trainee course with The Mountains and The People commenced at the end of April. As part of the course induction the team hiked up Ben Lomond. Accompanying us on our hike was Alistair of National Trust for Scotland Ben Lomond, who told us about the history of the area, as well as the environmental issues affecting the mountain.

The kids were searching the nettles in the hope of finding caterpillars, or other interesting bugs. Suddenly there was a yell, "I've found an orange caterpillar!" However, on closer inspection this wasn't a caterpillar, it looked like some sort of growth in the vein of the nettle leaf. After a bit of googling (what did we do before the internet?) we found the answer; it was a gall caused by a parasitic rust fungus, Puccinia urticata.

The Scots Pine tree is absolutely covered in the male flowers this year. Does this mean we're going to have loads of pine cones growing soon?

We went out again this evening to set the camera trap in the dingle. We spent a while thrashing through the undergrowth, splashing in the stream and falling in the bogs! Eventually we decided on a good place and left the camera. It was nearly dark as we returned, and we were treated to the tawny owl out hunting again, seeing it go up onto the telegraph posts to use as lookouts. Brilliant!

Day 2