Scenic Scotland with Lochs and Glens

Welcome to this series of articles about a coach holiday to the Trossachs and Highlands of Scotland.

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.

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Aberfeldy, Crieff and Pitlochry

Thursday 22 June 2023. Thursday morning and we are back in the coach and on our way to Crieff for a brief stop to see the memorial to the Black Watch regiment.

This is the view from our front seats on the coach. It's a glorious day and we are looking forward to another day in the Trossachs visiting places we have never seen before.

Wade's Bridge at Aberfeldy over the River Tay dates from 1866-1868. It has four arches of voussoirs (wedge-shaped stones) that take the B846 road. We cross and then turn right as the Black Watch Memorial is on the river bank. There's a small park with putting green and a class of primary age schoolchildren are enjoying its facilities as their school year comes towards an end.

The Black Watch were originally the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot, formed in 1739. In 1881 they were amalgamated with the 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot, dating from 1780 and at that point the Black Watch Battalion was born. "What's that silver line?" someone asked. "It looks like a lightning rod..." I suggested, "Either that or a personal telephone wire to the statue..."

Then it was back on the bus for the drive to Pitlochry. We passed a small herd of red deer to our left. I saw them but wasn't sitting for the full journey with my phone camera at the ready, so you'll have to imagine them. Antlers and everything...

We came to Pitlochry and I saw a signpost to a salmon ladder on the river down to our left. This is where salmon swimming up the river to breed come to a taller waterfall (or in this case a dam) than they can leap, so a series of pools act as steps that they can make the rise in short jumps.

After getting off the coach we went for a bite of lunch and then walked back to the roadsign, under a railway bridge and found ourselves at the restaurant. The river gurgled its way under the road to our right and stretched off to our left. There were no more indications as to the direction of the salmon ladder so we decided that unless we stumbled across it by accident we would probably miss it. We were right - we missed it... In fact as we got back to the coach park there was another signpost pointing in the opposite direction that we had walked. Why they send cars down that way I have no idea...

We walked back under the bridge to the main road and passed a small park. At the corner of the park and main road was the town's War Memorial.

The town had loads of inviting pubs. It was a very hot day. Ignoring them was a bit like torture, but I am under doctors' orders not to let alcohol pass my lips and probably having it via intravenous drip is probably not a good idea either.

I could have murdered a Guinness too... Miss Franny was very sympathetic and bought me an ice cream cone. As a treat she had some ice cream put into it as well. It still didn't taste like Guinness...

Another Wade's Bridge - this was the old bridge near the hotel, very narrow and now disused for all traffic except pedestrian and replaced by the new Tummel Bridge at it's side. As we rounded a blind corner a BT Open Reach van came flying round far too fast. How he avoided us I'm not sure but he had to reverse back. This was made a little difficult because a split second later a small black sports car did the same and just managed to stop behind him. Mr BT hadn't seen this though so set off backwards at the boggart (fast!)

The sports car driver had very good reflexes I have to say because he had his car in reverse pretty smartish and managed to avoid a collision. Both he and our driver Steve were frantically pipping their horns to try to get the BT van to slow down. All ended well, though we kept a wary eye out for BT vans the following day!

Once back at the hotel we went for a little wander on the lawn down to the loch but there were a few midges about and we thought discretion might be the better part of valour!

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A Day in Perth, Scotland

Wednesday 21 June 2023. We are on a coach holiday in the Scottish Highlands. "Beautiful Trossachs" someone said - I knew I shouldn't have worn that kilt in the wind...

Today we were to spend the day in Perth. The church is St John's Kirk - kirk being the Gaelic for church.

High Street. Perth Theatre is No.185, but this is now the rear entrance as the theatre address is Mill Street on the next street running parallel. It was opened in 1909 and extended in 1980.

In 2016 the extension was demolished and rebuilt and the entrance moved to Mill Street opposite the theatre's sister venue, Perth Concert Hall.

Also on High Street, lower down towards the River Tay is this cafe with an imaginative use of flowers. I'm not sure whether they were real or artificial but they do look good.

Between Nos. 13-15, an alleyway of 1699 with a dated pediment with carved head and the initials of RG (Robert Graham) and EC (Elizabeth Cunningham).

We walked down to the River Tay. This view is looking down Tay Street and the river itself is to our left. The church is St Matthew, 1871.

Smeaton's Bridge, aka the Old Bridge or in local dialect: the Auld Brig. A bridge had existed earlier but was demolished in 1621 and ferryboats had to be used until the construction of this bridge 1766-1771.

Having passed underneath the bridge via a pathway that dipped below road level, we came out to some gardens.

I started this sketch of St John's Kirk from the photograph seen earlier whilst we were sitting in the lounge one night. It didn't get finished until a fair few days after we got back and is pencil crayon over pencil drawing in the A4 sketch book.

Coming back to the hotel we stopped at Queen's View, a viewpoint over Loch Tummel that Queen Victoria had visited with Prince Albert. It was apparently on this trip that Albert decided to buy Balmoral.

Before starting the sketch of Perth, I finished the pencil sketch started the previous night of the view of Loch Tummel from the front lawn of the hotel.

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Awa' to Loch Tummel in Bonnie Scotland

The other week an advertising postcard dropped through the door. Normally I would just chuck this sort of thing straight in the recycling bin without particularly looking at it, but it did have a nice picture on it so I gave it a glance.

It was from a coach tour firm called Lochs & Glens Holidays and was offering a holiday called Scenic Scotland based at a hotel in the Scottish Highlands on the banks of Loch Tummel. I drank in the view for a moment and then read through the card and it did look a good holiday break and for a quite reasonable price. So I ran it past Miss Franny who sort of grunted and said, "Well get on with it then..." Within a couple of hours - I don't like to rush into these things... - we were booked on the holiday and had snagged front seats on the coach.

So on Tuesday 20 June 2023, we found ourselves standing amongst the somewhat horrendous roadworks outside the River Wyre Hotel on the Singleton to Fleetwood road, where an empty coach picked us up, the only two passengers getting on at the first stop. We then picked up several more in Cleveleys, then Blackpool, then a very soggy large group in Lytham St Annes before hitting the motorway north. We picked up a final soggy bunch of folks at Penrith and then made our way back onto the M6 until it ran out onto the M74 up into Scotland.

Gretna Green, then Moffat where we stopped for lunch, passing Glasgow where we jumped onto the M73 then the M80, then M9 to Bannockburn and Stirling, passing first the white flagpole of Bannockburn's battle site then Stirling's magnificent castle sitting on the core of an ancient volcano as does the castle at Edinburgh.

Dunblane, then onto cross-country 'A' roads. We by-pass Perth, then Pitlochry, both places we shall visit during the coming days then we cut off to cross Garry Bridge over the River Garry and from there it's narrow, winding roads with sloping banks to either side - one going up and the other dropping away. Loch Tummel comes into view on our left and a long way down. There's ten miles of it to come before we get to our hotel which sits at the far end.

We are riding shotgun on the front seats on the nearside of the coach. As such I had a great view of the road ahead. As we approached our hotel the coach was travelling down what seemed to be an ever-narrower road with steep bends that were impossible to see around until we were halfway round. By then the coach would be taking up every bit of the road's width because of it's length and the fact that the bus itself was very unbendy... As we approached a bend to the right I spotted a pair of brown legs disappear round the corner ahead. "There's something running up the road!" I said. When we rounded the corner it was a hare, running up the road before us until a handy gateway allowed it to nip off into a yard. No chance of a photo, so here's an impression done a couple of days after we got back.

We got to the hotel around 4:30 in the afternoon and the organisation of this place was fantastic. They emptied the coach of our luggage and it was delivered up to our rooms without any fuss or the need for us to touch it. In fact as we sat in the lounge just after an excellent meal, another three coaches turned up and they had the luggage from all three into the hotel and cleared up to the rooms within 20 minutes. I call that impressive. We had time before and after our meal to wander across the lawn in front of the hotel to view the lock and some fabulous scenery. A water wheel was on the side of one building, but it appeared to have lost some of its paddles. I started a sketch of this view but it didn't get finished until the following day.

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