First stop today was Crieff in Perthshire to visit McNee’s delicatessen. They do freshly-made sandwiches that are fantastic, in particular the goat’s cheese and roasted red peppers in their own ciabatta rolls! Back in the car we headed west to Comrie then south and west into Glen Artney, following the Water of Ruchill up the glen. Parking at the car park, we walked down to the river to have a picnic lunch sitting on the rocks.
Glen Artney is one of my childhood haunts, and one of my favourite places in the world. I used to come here every summer with my brother, sister and grandparents, and we would paddle and build dams in the river. It seemed strange to be back, probably for the first time in 15 years.
Everything looked a lot smaller than I remember! My brother and I used to have competitions to see who could throw a stone to the opposite bank of the river – no mean feat at the time, but ridiculously easy today! I couldn’t resist skimming a few stones for old time’s sake.
I could have stayed there all day quite happily, but we had other places still to go, so we headed back along Glen Artney to the Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre, another favourite place from my childhood. They have all kinds of animals there, both native and more exotic.
We retraced our steps back up to Comrie, then headed west through St Fillans and followed the north shore of Loch Earn to Lochearnhead where we turned north up Glen Ogle for Killin. There’d been quite a bit of rain recently, so the Falls of Dochart were looking quite impressive.
We carried on through Killin and around Loch Tay via Kenmore to the Falls of Acharn. After a short walk up the side of the Acharn Burn we reached the hermit’s cave, through which you get to the viewing platform for the waterfall.
Continuing on a theme, we then headed north beyond Pitlochry to the House of Bruar, where we parked the car and began the long walk up to the Falls of Bruar.
The falls are a series of waterfalls dropping 60 metres, making the Falls of Bruar the 7th highest waterfall in Britain.
