Garhel three

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I started in Helensburgh, through the lovely Colquhoun Square, and on up through leafy suburbs, past beautiful big houses. There is no pavement for much of this, but there is a verge and it is very quiet. There is a mistake in the plotting at the railway which you can’t fly over, you have to divert to the next road east and pass the station entrance (but first turn around and look at the view back).
After passing Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House, currently shrouded in a chain curtain to allow it to dry out slowly, there's a lovely woodland path though old trees covered in moss and lichen, with occasional gaps in the trees where you can see glimpses of Helensburgh and the Clyde. The path is crushed cinder just like the earlier part of the Three Lochs Way.
There are fabulous views after turning north, although it is a climb. Further up there's also a view of Loch Lomond.
My GPS failed at this point, so the photos will have crazy geolocation.
Crossing this moorland section, there was potential for the path to be muddy. There were gates, distant cows, cattle grid, and also insects, and other wildlife including buzzards.
There were no facilities on this route. The best place I found for my packed lunch, about a third of the way, was a couple of large smooth pathside rocks, just before Fruin Water.
There was now a long, long section of tarmac road but I saw almost no motor traffic here, and it was a beautiful valley.
It was exposed to sun and wind and at times I could feel the booms in the air from the Garelochhead firing range, or maybe it was quarrying.
I had hoped to be able to do the alternative route, as describe by the Walk Highlands website, but having checked on https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/scotland-firing-times for the Garelochhead Range times I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to. This was confirmed by lots more shooting sounds as I got nearer to the main road, and also by the red flags I could see in the distance.
It appears their training area extends beyond the shooting zone, and they have a base on this route, ironically close to the memorial to the Battle of Glenfruin. At the top I got my first glimpses of Gare Loch and Loch Long.
The A817 was not much fun - I started to think that maybe the military section was safer because the cars were very fast, and in some sections, there was very little verge available. Sorry, that was flippant! There was a good view of Faslane from the layby though. It was really nice to reach the roundabout and the off-road tarmac track, which was lovely but didn’t look well used. It was surprisingly steep and windy. This led almost all the way to the end point of the route.
The first 35% was lovely, 10% near the end was horrible and maybe a bit dangerous. The middle section was nice but wearing on the feet. I will upload the alternative route for when there is no shooting, which I would recommend trying, but I was unable to.

This route mainly follows the Three Lochs Way on good tracks and a quiet tarmac road. It's enjoyable except for a 1km section near the start which is up a busy and fast road with no path for pedestrians. There is ample space to walk on the side for most of it apart from a short section where one needs to be more careful.
The alternative would be to follow signs for the Three Lochs Ways when leaving Garelochhead. This route goes through a short section of wood, over a stile and up a muddy and wet grassy slope, over a fence (with no stile) and onto the Three Lochs Ways. This joins on to the Garhel route. This route (in the reverse direction) is detailed on https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/lochlomond/helensburgh-garelochhead.shtml.

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