Amulree is, as far as we could see, a very small settlement, yet it has a village hall with above-average parking facilities (tarmacked with marked out spaces). Even better, rather than keeping that car park closed off when the hall is not in use, they are happy for people to park, with 'donations appreciated'. That was convenient for us on Thursday morning, as it was only a kilometre along the road from the track we wanted to use to access a couple of hills.
Our hills weren't big ones (627m and 617m respectively), but it wasn't the best day for it, with the cloud down below 450m when we set out, but at least the rain paused whilst we were out. (Full report can be read here.)
Feeling that the village hall wasn't an appropriate place to spend the night, and wanting to visit Crieff on Friday morning, we needed to find somewhere in between. I'd eyed up a place on Google Maps, an out-and-back detour totalling 3 miles from the A822, but when we got there it proved not to be suitable. Backtracking to the main road we settled Bertie into a spot I'd pointed out just before we turned off onto the minor road. After the recent rain, some churned up mud made it look less attractive than it would in summer, but we were level, well off the road (no buffetting) and it was quiet overnight.
After the short drive to Crieff and a quick bagging of the Knock of Crieff (excellent viewpoint! Full report here) on Friday morning, we thought we'd take a little look at the town, having no memory of the place from when we walked through on our way from Lowestoft to Ardnamurchan in 2011. Bertie was slotted into one of the free car parks and with rain falling it seemed like a good idea to have elevenses before heading out.
During the next half an hour the car park filled around us and we watched some horrendously inept drivers trying to manoeuvre into spaces ("For goodness sake, turn the steering wheel!"). It was making us nervous of leaving Bertie there, particularly given the tightness of the space next to us. On analysis it turned out we weren't that fussed on visiting Crieff, so we moved on.
Where to go next, bearing in mind we wanted to be in Bridge of Allan this morning (Saturday)? Perhaps straight to Bridge of Allan?
We were heading in that direction*, driving along the A9, when I saw the sign for Dunblane, underneath which was a brown tourist sign for the cathedral. A quick survey of the occupants of Bertie discerned that neither of us had ever been to the cathedral (although Mick had driven through Dunblane many times, as that was the route of the A9 when he first moved to Scotland, in the late 1970s).
The car park to which I directed us turned out to belong to the cemetary, so we spent a while dithering over whether it was approrpriate to leave Bertie there. By the time we'd finished lunch we'd observed that it was being used almost exclusively by dog walkers and as a rest stop for business vans, rather than by visitors to the cemetary. That made us feel better about leaving Bertie for a couple of hours (and we did visit the graveyard, as it happens).
It had been our intention to move on, but once back at Bertie we concluded that staying where we were was unlikely to offend anyone (end of a dead-end road, out of sight of houses and too late in the day for there to be a funeral). Graveyards always seem to make for quiet neighbours and last night was no exception.
We were gone before it got light this morning, with our destination being the University of Stirling, which (as of last Saturday) is the home of a new parkrun. With Scottish parkruns not starting until 9.30am, we arrived excessively early. This was intentional and worked out well. By 8.15, when the England v Australia rugby match kicked off, we had the aerial out on the roof, the TV tuned in and were only 2 minutes from the run's start line.
Mick did have the option of sitting out the run, but chose to miss the second half of the rugby instead (immediately on arriving back at Bertie he grabbed his phone to read what had happened, whilst I washed the comprehensive covering of mud off his legs (and mine)).
It's a nice course they've got there, being two-and-a-bit laps of the loch, mainly on engineered paths (bit splashy and muddy today), with views of hills and the Wallace Monument (and, of course, across the loch). With excellent timing, the rain which had been falling since yesterday evening stopped about ten minutes before the start.
Post-run coffee was enjoyed in the bistro in one of the halls of residence, chatting with a trio from Dundee. When they left we would have followed suit, except that there was a TV at the other end of the room showing the Ireland v New Zealand match. Thus it happened that we were by far the last parkrunners to leave the venue, at around 1315.
The second round of refreshments included cake and an excellent smoked salmon and spinach omelette
Even then we didn't leave the university immediately, as we had no idea to where we were heading next. Maps and hill lists were consulted and via a supermarket (Bertie's cupboards and fridge were running *very* low) we've travelled to the north end of the Carron Valley Reservoir. We arrived to find a Dutch car parked in our intended spot with four shifty-looking men just heading off into the woodland adjacent. I'm pretty sure they were Geocaching. They were only here for twenty minutes or so, before kindly vacating our spot.
I've looked at the map since arriving here and have confirmed my suspicion: we walked within half a kilometre of this spot on our way from Land's End to John o'Groats in 2008.
(*There was a point during that journey, well before we reached the A9, that I said to Mick: "Conrad's left a comment. He said ... hump .... HUMP!". Whilst Mick was still trying to work out why Conrad was talking about humps, he hit the traffic-calming measure, of which I was trying to warn him, without braking. We've had worse (mainly in Norway); this was a gentle rise up then an extended flat top before the ramp back down, so it only resulted in a slight rearranging of the contents of Bertie's cupboards.)
Our hills weren't big ones (627m and 617m respectively), but it wasn't the best day for it, with the cloud down below 450m when we set out, but at least the rain paused whilst we were out. (Full report can be read here.)
Feeling that the village hall wasn't an appropriate place to spend the night, and wanting to visit Crieff on Friday morning, we needed to find somewhere in between. I'd eyed up a place on Google Maps, an out-and-back detour totalling 3 miles from the A822, but when we got there it proved not to be suitable. Backtracking to the main road we settled Bertie into a spot I'd pointed out just before we turned off onto the minor road. After the recent rain, some churned up mud made it look less attractive than it would in summer, but we were level, well off the road (no buffetting) and it was quiet overnight.
After the short drive to Crieff and a quick bagging of the Knock of Crieff (excellent viewpoint! Full report here) on Friday morning, we thought we'd take a little look at the town, having no memory of the place from when we walked through on our way from Lowestoft to Ardnamurchan in 2011. Bertie was slotted into one of the free car parks and with rain falling it seemed like a good idea to have elevenses before heading out.
During the next half an hour the car park filled around us and we watched some horrendously inept drivers trying to manoeuvre into spaces ("For goodness sake, turn the steering wheel!"). It was making us nervous of leaving Bertie there, particularly given the tightness of the space next to us. On analysis it turned out we weren't that fussed on visiting Crieff, so we moved on.
Where to go next, bearing in mind we wanted to be in Bridge of Allan this morning (Saturday)? Perhaps straight to Bridge of Allan?
We were heading in that direction*, driving along the A9, when I saw the sign for Dunblane, underneath which was a brown tourist sign for the cathedral. A quick survey of the occupants of Bertie discerned that neither of us had ever been to the cathedral (although Mick had driven through Dunblane many times, as that was the route of the A9 when he first moved to Scotland, in the late 1970s).
The car park to which I directed us turned out to belong to the cemetary, so we spent a while dithering over whether it was approrpriate to leave Bertie there. By the time we'd finished lunch we'd observed that it was being used almost exclusively by dog walkers and as a rest stop for business vans, rather than by visitors to the cemetary. That made us feel better about leaving Bertie for a couple of hours (and we did visit the graveyard, as it happens).
The cathedral with its two-tone tower resulting from a couple of extra storeys having been added in a few hundred years ago.
An enthusiastic guide gave us an introduction to the history of the cathedral before we wandered around. It's not huge, but it has an interesting enough history to have made the effort worthwhile. Had it been earlier in the day, we probably would have visited the museum across the road too.An elevated view of the cathedral's interior. From the 1620s the section between where I took this snap and the rood screen stood roofless for the best part of 300 years.
It had been our intention to move on, but once back at Bertie we concluded that staying where we were was unlikely to offend anyone (end of a dead-end road, out of sight of houses and too late in the day for there to be a funeral). Graveyards always seem to make for quiet neighbours and last night was no exception.
We were gone before it got light this morning, with our destination being the University of Stirling, which (as of last Saturday) is the home of a new parkrun. With Scottish parkruns not starting until 9.30am, we arrived excessively early. This was intentional and worked out well. By 8.15, when the England v Australia rugby match kicked off, we had the aerial out on the roof, the TV tuned in and were only 2 minutes from the run's start line.
Mick did have the option of sitting out the run, but chose to miss the second half of the rugby instead (immediately on arriving back at Bertie he grabbed his phone to read what had happened, whilst I washed the comprehensive covering of mud off his legs (and mine)).
It's a nice course they've got there, being two-and-a-bit laps of the loch, mainly on engineered paths (bit splashy and muddy today), with views of hills and the Wallace Monument (and, of course, across the loch). With excellent timing, the rain which had been falling since yesterday evening stopped about ten minutes before the start.
Post-run coffee was enjoyed in the bistro in one of the halls of residence, chatting with a trio from Dundee. When they left we would have followed suit, except that there was a TV at the other end of the room showing the Ireland v New Zealand match. Thus it happened that we were by far the last parkrunners to leave the venue, at around 1315.
Even then we didn't leave the university immediately, as we had no idea to where we were heading next. Maps and hill lists were consulted and via a supermarket (Bertie's cupboards and fridge were running *very* low) we've travelled to the north end of the Carron Valley Reservoir. We arrived to find a Dutch car parked in our intended spot with four shifty-looking men just heading off into the woodland adjacent. I'm pretty sure they were Geocaching. They were only here for twenty minutes or so, before kindly vacating our spot.
I've looked at the map since arriving here and have confirmed my suspicion: we walked within half a kilometre of this spot on our way from Land's End to John o'Groats in 2008.
(*There was a point during that journey, well before we reached the A9, that I said to Mick: "Conrad's left a comment. He said ... hump .... HUMP!". Whilst Mick was still trying to work out why Conrad was talking about humps, he hit the traffic-calming measure, of which I was trying to warn him, without braking. We've had worse (mainly in Norway); this was a gentle rise up then an extended flat top before the ramp back down, so it only resulted in a slight rearranging of the contents of Bertie's cupboards.)
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