Fall Scottish Trip, Part 1

Mt Rainier as we fly out of PDX.

A rainy greeting in Crieff, Scotland.

Crieff and About. Our first stop on each trip to Scotland is the village of Crieff in the county of Perthshire. Besides being the home of our adopted family, the Cliffords, Crieff is central to many interesting attractions. In this post I’ll present a photo essay of some of the attractions that draw us back—waterfalls, mountains, forests, ancient sites—and end with a more complete description of one of the more unique of Perthshire’s tourist sites.

The Highland Hills around Crieff

The Falls of Dochart, the River Dochart in Killin. The river flows into Loch Tay and ends up as the western extension of Scotland’s longest river, the River Tay. 

The River Dochart drains from the eastern side of Ben Lui and the north side of Ben More.

The village of Killin is on both sides of the Bridge of Dochart built in 1760 and rebuild after a major flood in 1831. All these photos we taken from the bridge.

The Clan McNab Burial Ground is on an island (Innes Bhuidhe) in the middle of the river; there are graves there of nine clan chiefs.

Ben Lawers. This mountain is the highest in the southern part of the Highlands. The name in Gaelic means “Claw Mountain,” and it’s a Munro at 1214m (3983 feet)—a Munro is a Scottish mountain over 3000 feet tall. 

Bronze Age remains have been found at various locations on the mountain.

Sheep freely roam the lower slopes of the mountain.

Ben Lawers is now a National Nature Reserve with many species of protected flora and fauna. Most of the south side of the mountain has been owned by the National Trust for Scotland since 1950.

The Birks of Aberfeldy. The Birks is a circular 1.5 mile nature walk along the Moness River in the Moness Glen. The birks were made famous by Scottish national poet Robert Burns’s poem of the same name:

Bonnie Lassie, will ye go,

Will ye go, will ye go, 

Bonnie Lassie, will ye go

to the birks of Aberfeldy!

The Birks is a site of Special Scientific Interest for botanic plant life. 

The circular trail is most scenic when walked clockwise.

The path leads to Moness Falls which drops in three tiers a total of 380m--difficult to photograph, but lovely.

Croft Moraig (Mary’s Croft) Stone Circle. On A827 between Aberfeldy and Kenmare is a compact grouping of stones which is actually a complex double stone circle dated to around 2000BC. 

The site was officially excavated in 1965.

Robert Burns mentioned visitors exploring the stone circle over 200 years ago.

A least one survey lists the circle as one of the 20 best prehistoric sites in Scotland.

Cultybraggan Camp. This place has a reputation for being haunted. People say they get strange feelings about the place, they see figures in the shadows, faces looking through the broken panes of glass, ghostly figures about. It’s not surprising that Cultybraggan Camp has that reputation if you know its history.

The camp was built in 1941 to house 4000 Category “A” POWs. Named Camp 21, it was  a “Black Camp” holding the most committed and fanatical Nazi POWs. It was the camp that held the ringleaders of the Devizes Plot—a scheme to break 250,000 POWs out of camps and attack Britain from within.

After the war the camp was opened in 1949 as a training camp for Regular Army. Later, several of the 100 original Nissen huts (quonset huts) were removed to make room for a firing range. Then in the 1960s, the camp was made into an ROC (Royal Observation Corps) monitoring post. An underground Regional Government HQ bunker—Cold War survival bunker designed to be used by the Scottish Secretary of State—was added in 1990.

Finally, in 2004 Cultybrqggan was sold to the Comrie (the closest village) Development Trust and is now used for local small businesses, agricultural uses, and sports fields. There are plans to renovate the camp into a 4 Star hotel complex, but the ghosts have yet to give their approval.

Two photos of the Amulree area about 17 miles from Crieff.

Also 17 miles from Crieff, in a different direction, is St Fillans GC where we are members.

NEXT: We hunt for fall colors.