The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Sun shines on short break
Schiehallion is known as ‘the fairy mountain’ on account of the fairies who live in a cave running deep into it which is believed to be the entrance to the underworld
The Doyenne and I are home from a short break in Perthshire. Not very far to go, you might think. True, but central Perthshire is markedly different from our familiar Mearns and the north-east.
Anyway a change is as good as a holiday – as my Loanhead aunties might very well have said.
We struck it lucky weather-wise as the forecasts for the few short days we were to be away were distinctly gloomy. The Grampian mountain tops were still well covered with snow, transforming the landscape and highlighting features you don’t normally notice.
Below the snowline the hillsides and brae faces looked bare, colourwashed with the crotal browns of dead bracken and the bleached, faded colours of the undergrowth.
The sun shone throughout which fairly lifted our spirits. We hadn’t done our homework before we went away. We’d looked forward to exploring secret places up little side roads, but we discovered how few roads there are in what is very much a wilderness part of Scotland.
Historic Aberfeldy has strong Jacobite connections. Probably the most striking of the 40 bridges built by General George Wade crosses the River Tay here, originally carrying one of the principal military roads to Inverness.
The general was appointed by King George I after the failure of the 1715 Jacobite Uprising to build a network of military roads and bridges to assist with the “civilisation” – a typical 18th Century political euphemism for military suppression – of the Highland clans. His road-building programme speeded up the disarming of the Highlanders and the eventual English domination of the Highlands.
An evocative kilted statue and memorial to the raising of The Black Watch regiment (the gallant FortyTwa) in 1739 stands on the town side of the bridge. Carved with a strong, selfreliant face, armed with broadsword and flintlock, and an eagle’s feather in his bonnet, the figure gazes confidently into the far distance.
It’s a striking contrast with the equally forceful statue of The Black Watch soldier that used to stand guard over Dundee from the top of Powrie Brae, but which was moved to the foot of the brae, on the road to Duntrune.
Crossing the river, we took the B846 past the massif of Weem Hill. Tucked up against a tree-lined hillside is 16th Century Castle Menzies. The castle played host to Bonnie Prince Charlie, who rested there for a night on his retreat north from Derby which ended in his catastrophic defeat on Culloden Moor. It’s ironic the prince and his Jacobite troops could cross the Tay dryshod, using the bridge built to accelerate destruction of the culture which twice raised an army that would come down from the hills to threaten the security of the Hanoverian masters.
Days later, the Duke of Cumberland, commander of the government forces which so comprehensively destroyed the Highland regiments at Culloden, was entertained at Castle Menzies, too. Surely a case of the canny clan hedging their bets in pretty edgy times.
We drove into the township of Dull, whose name is probably of Gaelic derivation, meaning place of sadness because it was where executions by hanging took place. It’s typically Perthshire and not in the least dull and its signpost is a tourist attraction in itself, announcing that you have reached Dull paired with Boring, Oregon, USA.
The road rises to a plateau and you look north to the dramatic panorama of the Cairngorms National Park.
The skyline is sawtoothed with the peaks of Munros – Scotland’s mountains above 3,000 feet. Ranged in among them are the lower peaks of Corbetts, mere hills between 2,500 and 3,000ft high.
Still on the B846 we headed for Tummel Bridge, but halfway along turned left on to the Schiehallion road. The whaleback ridge of Schiehallion, 3,547ft high, stands isolated from its neighbouring peaks and with every twist and turn of the road you see a new feature.
It’s known as “the fairy mountain” on account of the fairies who live in a cave running deep into it which is believed to be the entrance to the underworld. But covered in snow, sparkling in the strong sunshine, its conical summit framed in the blue sky – it just looked fairytale.
But our wee break all too soon ended and we were heading home, taking the chance to call in on friends near Calvine whom we hadn’t seen for years.
We collected Inka from The Moorie kennels and he bounded into the car, greeting us with hot breath and sloppy licks.