holiday accommodation pitlochry
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holiday accommodation pitlochry, bed breakfast, perthshire, atholl, highlands, scotland, hospitality, golf, fishing, walking, games, curling, scenic, holiday accommodation pitlochry
"Aberfoyle, Parish in south-west extremity of Perthshire, with post-office under Stirling, and a hotel 61/2 miles north-north-west of Bucklyvie railway station. Length, 10 1/2 miles; breadth, 5 1/2 miles; area, 26,810 acres. Real property in 1880-81, £4579. Pop., qouad civilia, 465; quoad sacra, 409. A bill was promoted in 1880 for a railway, on a capital of £55,000, from the vicinity of the hotel to a junction with the Forth and Clyde Railway between Bucklyvie and Balfron. A glen, on the south-east border, contains the hotel and the church; extends about 2 miles west-ward, with a width of about 1/2 mile, and is traversed by the chief head-stream of the river Forth. A pass at the glen's head figured much in the raids of the Highland caterans, and was the scene of a victory of Graham of Duchray over a body of Cromwell's troops. The general surface is upland, and includes the Benvenue, Benchochan, and some lesser mountains. Loch Katrine, the Trossachs, and Loch Achray are on the northern border; Loch Drunkie is in the north-east corner; and Lochs Chon and Ard are in the south-west. The aggregate scenery is much diversified and richly picturesque, and many spots figure graphically in Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy, Waverly, and Lady of the Lake; but the 'clachan' of his romance, on a site about a mile west of the hotel, is now extinct. The public school has about 65 scholars." Wilson, Rev. John, The Gazetteer of Scotland, 1882.
This is the most readily accessible truly Highland community, from the south, with Glasgow only 30 miles by road, and Stirling 16. It is consequently highly popular for visitors, and deservedly so--indeed it is today becoming so for 'commuters' also. Itself an attractive area, it is also the gateway to further delights.
There are four distinct sections of Aberfoyle, two of them 2 miles apart--from the Rob Roy Roadhouse area to the east, to the Milton on the west, almost at the narrow foot of Loch Ard. The former is most visitors' first sight of Aberfoyle, and here there has always been a mill and cottages also, the mill-wheel still in position. Here too is the golf-course. The other two sections are called the Clachan and the Kirkton-- these all being typical old Scots divisions of any community. Nowadays the whole village tends to get called the Clachan of Aberfoyle; but this in fact used only to refer to the group of cottages round the famous inn, which lay almost a mile west of the present modern village--an inn haunted by Rob Roy and generations of other MacGregors, corning down from Glen Gyle, Inversnaid and so on. The present Bailie Nicol Jarvie Hotel is the 'descendant' of this inn, though on a more easterly site, and still retains the famed poker, really a plough coulter, with which the doughty bailie laid about him, as in the scene immortalised by Scott in his Rob Roy. This modern part of the village is not particularly attractive, despite its fine setting--indeed it grew up round the now-defunct railway station, and rather looks the part. The station has gone, and its yard is now used as a large, necessary but hardly handsome car-park, with facilities. Here are good shops, tea-rooms, craft centres and the like.