T ancient

he villages of Meigle and Ardler sit in the broad and fertile Vale of Strathmore. Separated by just a few miles, their histories are very different. While Meigle grew organically from Christian roots and was an important Pictish settlement, Ardler was planned from the outset and was originally named Washington, after the American president.

It owed its existence to the coming of the railways in the 19th Century and, while the local lines have long since been dismantled, my walk linking the pair makes some use of the abandoned trackbed left behind.

Setting out from the Kinloch Memorial Hall, my first encounter with the old railway came as I forked off Dundee Road and wandered along a quiet country lane towards Meigle Country House, formerly a cottage hospital and now a care home.

Lurking beneath a band of leafy deciduous trees, the line here – once the branch to Alyth – is overgrown and not particularly enticing to walkers. Happily, however, a farm track runs parallel down through neighbouring fields, the view of Kinpurney Hill to the south, with its landmark tower, a bonus.

The railway curving west, I stayed off-line, content to track its course from a distance as I followed a minor road through a break in the embankment and on towards the busier B954.

Across the carriageway, beyond a gateway in a wall and a band of woodland, a farm track led me west, through arable fields bordering Belmont Woods to the north. By farm cottages at East Camno, I turned south, tramping tarmac down to Camno Crossing where I finally got on track, joining the line that linked Meigle with Ardler.

A pleasant trail flanked by silver birches occupies the permanent way, once part of the Scottish Midland Junction Railway which ran from Perth to Forfar and opened in August 1848.

A spur north to Alyth, with a station at Meigle, was added in 1861 and a derelict brick hut marks the site of Ardler Junction, where the line from Newtyle, to the south, converged. From here it is a straight run to Ardler.