fb.watch/1Wn-l7xuiZ/

A short video of our wonderful “between lockdowns” holiday to some of the most stunning parts of England!

Well, our walk today made us kind of sad as we find ourselves back in lockdown yet again.

During the first lockdown the weather was mostly good, the Spring flowers were coming out, the days were getting longer and we got to explore places we may not have bothered with otherwise.

As we enter another lockdown in winter, it’s harder to stay upbeat, especially now that the colours of Autumn have all but passed. The leaves have pretty much all dropped and the weather has been pretty wet of late. However, we are hoping for some nice crisp winter days with maybe some heavy frost or a covering of snow to cheer us up.

Today we took one of our “usual” walks along the Kelvin Walkway to Kelvingrove Park. We diverted via a deserted Ashton Lane, in the heart of the west end, normally jumping at weekends (well, most days of the week to be honest). Today we took this tragically beautiful photo of the bars, restaurants and cafes all locked and boarded up…

We continued on to the cloisters of Glasgow University, which lifted us a little, as they were covered in fairy lights, ready for Christmas.

It’s getting pretty difficult to find any travel related things to blog about, so next week we shall probably work on adding some more pages to our “Around Glasgow” menu, so watch out for those.

Keep well everyone xx

During the first lockdown I wrote a book on Glasgow’s West End Walks. It’s available on both kindle and paperback on Amazon.

Now that we find ourselves back in lockdown, if you live in the west end and missed this little guide first time around, you may be interested now, though lets hope the weather improves!

Thanks for reading! Yvonne

Disclaimer – this post contains an Amazon Affiliate link.

Click the link to view our newest web pages

Canoeing on Loch Lomond

Hiking up the “Whangie”

– enjoy!

At the weekend we decided to head over to the Falls of Clyde, only 30 miles, and just under an hour’s drive from home. We thought it would be nice to spend the weekend, so we booked an overnight stay at New Lanark Mill, a beautiful hotel in a historic building located within the New Lanark World Heritage Site. (Note that although I have given the link to the hotel’s own website for information, we managed to get a better price on Booking.com).

We had previously visited the falls in summer and had said at the time that it would be great to return to see them in the autumn – we were not disappointed! Surrounded by the autumn foliage they were absolutely stunning! The path is easy to follow and relatively easy to walk, although there are some steps along the way.

Although it is possible to walk a circuit, you cannot return by crossing directly over the river at New Lanark as there is no bridge there, so you have to continue past for a couple of miles before you can cross.

As it was already very muddy underfoot in places (fortunately we had the foresight to wear welly boots), we decided to stick with the path we knew rather than attempt to circuit. The first great vantage point was at Cora Linn Falls, as seen below.

These falls are probably the most photogenic, but it’s a very close call between them and Bonnington Linn, a “horseshoe” of three waterfalls. See what you think…

If you continue on from this viewpoint, you can cross the footbridge over to the other side of the river. For photography, the best viewpoint we found on the other side of the river, is the one looking over to Bonnington Linn. When the path forks, take the one that stays next to the river and it will take you to a couple of viewpoints where you will see these falls from a different perspective.

We continued just past Corra Castle (a rather unexciting ruin) to the viewpoints adjacent to the Cora Linn Falls. These viewpoints are not as good for photography as the one on the other side of the river, but you are very close to the falls, so you can really feel the force of them.

At this point we turned back and retraced our route back to the village and our hotel. We stopped off in the village to visit the “Maker’s Market” where we purchased some scrumptious homemade tablet, soap and a Dundee marmalade gin liqueur. We are not gin fans, but we got some free tastings and these liqueurs were all lovely – fortunately we both preferred the same one!

Back at the hotel, it was unfortunate that the leisure facilities (pool etc) were closed due to Covid (though we did know this when we booked), so we had a fairly early dinner, which was very good and reasonably priced – I had fish & chips and Paul has steak & ale pie. Due to Covid restrictions, we had to enjoy some water rather than wine with our meal, but we later enjoyed sharing a bottle in our room. Another visit is definitely on the cards once the leisure facilities re-open, as that would be perfect after a walk.

We hope that you have enjoyed reading this blog, and will be grateful if you can like and share it using the buttons below.

Based on our latest blog, I have created a kindle book for “Leaf-peeping” in Perthshire with additional information to that in the blog, and some more beautiful photographs.

You can download it to your kindle device for only £1.49 (or foreign currency equivalent, as it is also available on other Amazon sites) and enjoy reading it without the pop-up adverts that automatically come up in our blogs.

If you want to buy, or just preview, click here. Or if you know of anyone who might be interested, then please share.

Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: this blog entry contains Amazon affiliate links

So this weekend we travelled to Pitlochry in Perthshire to do what our friends over in North America call “leaf peeping” ie. travelling to view and photograph the autumn foliage. Perthshire is often referred to as “big tree country” and is reckoned to be the best area in Scotland for enjoying the colours of autumn. We agree! There are other places in Scotland and the UK that have excellent autumn foliage, but Perthshire in our opinion cannot be beaten. See what you think yourselves as you scroll through our blog and photographs…

Due to ever-changing Covid restrictions, we waited until Friday afternoon to book accomodation, having decided not to camp on this occasion. We had already shortlisted some places and ended up booking the lovely Rosehill Guest House in Pitlochry. We would highly recommend this lovely place – there is off-street parking, the owner is very friendly and helpful, breakfasts are very good and the rooms are lovely. Jackie, the owner, even let us bring fish & chips in for dinner, which we had with a bottle of wine, in the breakfast room (due to restrictions all restaurants etc were to be closed by 6pm except for outdoors, and autumn is really a bit too cold for eating outdoors!)

On Saturday, when we drove up to Pitlochry, which is around 1 hour 40 minutes from Glasgow by the most direct route, we decided to take a bit of a detour. We have previously spent quite a few autumn weekends around Loch Tay & Kenmore (also in Perthshire), so we knew the foliage would be good there. We headed up first to Killin (which is actually in Stirlingshire) and parked up to take some photographs around the Falls of Dochart. The falls were very low as it has been fairly dry, so the photograph below is taken looking away from the falls towards the bridge over the river. As you can see, there were some nice colours on the surrounding trees.

We then took the road along the north shore of Loch Tay and after a few miles, took a left up into Ben Lawers Nature Reserve. This mountain is one of Scotland’s 282 Munros (mountains over 3,000 feet high) and is a very popular hill walk. The car park and roadside near the start of the walk was very busy. But at least people had parked off-road and generally avoided passing places, as the road is single-track.

We continued on to the dam at the top of the road, where I took the lovely photo below. The water was very calm, so I got a great reflection of the surrounding mountains.

We then continued on to Bridge of Balgie and drove along Glen Lyon, which is famed for its autumn colours. This glen is often referred to as being Scotland’s most beautiful glen, especially in autumn. We took these beautiful photos along the way…

After the drive along the glen, we headed on to Tummel Bridge and along the north shore of Loch Tummel. There is a famous viewpoint along this side of Loch Tummel called the “Queen’s View”, however, we much preferred this view we got by pulling off the road a few miles before the Queen’s View (there was no official parking at the spot we took this photo, we just happened to notice a couple of cars had pulled up and people were taking photos from here)…

As we had set off early, we still had plenty of time, so instead of heading straight into Pitlochry, we headed to Killiecrankie Gorge on the River Garry (only 3 miles north of Pitlochry). This is a beautiful wooded gorge with stunning views from the road bridge in both directions. There are plenty of walks of varying lengths, including walks into Pitlochry and to surrounding viewpoints and historic points of interest. The area is famous in history for the Battle of Killiecrankie which took place during the Jacobite rebellion. We went back again the next day to see if this lighting was any better in the morning for photographs (it was).

After doing a short walk and taking some photographs at the gorge, we headed to our guest house in Pitlochry to check-in. Once we had brought our bags up to our room, used the loo (toilets everywhere were shut!) and had some water, we headed back out to walk around Loch Faskally, which is right by the town. At the end of the loch is a dam and a “fish ladder” where, at the right time of year, you can watch the salmon leap up the “ladder” (Autumn is apparently a good time to see them, but we didn’t see any at all). If you are interested in seeing the salmon leaping, Linn of Tummel, quite close to Pitlochry is also supposed to be a good place to see them.

Anyway, back to Loch Faskally… This is a beautiful loch surrounded by woodland, excellent for enjoying and photographing the fall colours. You can walk all the way round, although a small section is on the road. When we were there the loch was completely calm, giving us fantastic photo opportunities to capture stunning reflections of the trees in the loch…

After completing our walk around Loch Faskally, we stopped at the Auld Smiddy Inn for a drink before picking up our fish & chips and bringing them back to the guest house for dinner. We got our fish supper from “The Plaice To Be” as it had the better reviews on Tripadvisor. It was fairly good, but we have had better (and a lot worse), however we thought that the £1.25 charge for the tiniest tub of curry sauce I have ever seen was very steep!

After a hearty breakfast on Sunday morning, we headed into the Faskally Forest (walkable or a very short drive from town) to do the short 1.2 kilometer “Dunmore Trail” around the Loch Dunmore. This small but incredibly pretty loch is set within woodland and the water is surrounded by trees. It is just gorgeous in the autumn.

At this time of year normally the forest is set up for an evening sound and light show called “The Enchanted Forest” but it was cancelled this year due to Covid.

We popped back up to Killiecrankie after the forest to get some more photos and for Paul to fly his drone a short way along the gorge, then we headed back to the southern end of Pitlochry to the car park for Black Spout Falls. We were surprised that these falls are not more well known as they were really beautiful, especially in autumn, and also easy to get to (again easily walkable from town, or a very short drive, barely out of town). We only found out about them as there was a photograph of them in the guest house breakfast room, so I googled to see where they were and added them to our “To Do” list. See what you think from the photo below…

Driving just over 12 miles (about 20 minutes) south, we stopped just a tiny bit north of Dunkeld, at The Hermitage. Again, this was a place we had never even heard of before (and we live in Scotland!) It was only when browsing Facebook that I saw some photos someone had put up on a group that I follow. It looked really nice, so when I googled it and found out it was close to Pitlochry, we decided to incorporate a visit as part of our weekend. We were heading home the “direct” way anyway, down the A9, so it fitted in perfectly as a stop on our route home.

The parking was manic, we were lucky to get into the car park (it’s National Trust owned and costs £3), but people were also parked all along the roadside for quite a distance.

The Hermitage is set within woodland and is most famous for Black Linn Falls (on the River Braan) and Ossian’s Hall which was built in 1757 and sits overlooking the falls.

The walk we did was around 2.5 kilometres, walking along the river to Ossian Hall and then on to Ossian’s Cave before looping back through the woods. You can continue on the paths to make a much longer walk, but time was short for us.

We finished our trip with a short stop in Dunkeld, a pretty little town (by Scottish standards), just a kilometre south of The Hermitage. The River Tay flows through the town, which has a well preserved historic cathedral and pretty coloured houses.

From Dunkeld back to Glasgow is around 1 hour 40 minutes. All together we drove around 230 miles during our weekend away. We managed to fit so much in and feel we saw the best of autumnal Perthshire.

If you enjoyed reading this blog please use the buttons below to like and to share with your friends. Thank you!

The “Three Lochs Drive” in the Achray Forest is only open to cars till around the end of October and re-opens around Easter. October is the only month when it is open to cars that you can camp without buying a permit. Permit’s are not expensive, but they were hard to come by, especially this year as most people weren’t travelling abroad. We only managed one trip during permit season, so we decided to head up there at the weekend and see if we could find a decent spot.

It was still pretty busy, but there were spots available to camp. We really like the ones around Loch Drunkie, and this time we chose one higher up overlooking the loch through the trees, as it wasn’t too far to carry our camping gear to.

The area we chose was “I”. Previously we had camped on the small peninsula in this area, right at the lochside, but this time we felt like a change. Parking is easy, you just use the “Fisherman’s car park” and then carry your gear in. Most spots are a maximum of around 400 metres from the car park, ours was around 200 metres away.

We really liked the spot we chose and would definitely use it again. The only downside was no direct loch access, but as we weren’t canoeing this time, it didn’t really matter. We started down the narrow trail from the car park that leads to the peninsula, but cuts off to the right after perhaps 30-40 metres into the high forest where we followed the path to the second of the open areas which had space to set up camp (the first area we came to was fine, but lacked the views).

There was plenty of room for both our tent and tarp / picnic table & chairs, and there was a decent fire pit overlooking the loch, that had been left by previous campers.

From area “I” you can walk to the main visitor area / car park where there are decent toilets. It’s less than 2 kilometres and much of the walk is along the lochside.

As it was October, the trees had already started to change colour, so it was particularly stunning as you can see from the photo above and photos below. All these photos are at Loch Drunkie except for the final photo which was taken looking over Loch Achray towards Ben Ann on our drive out…

If you are interested in camping within the Three Lochs Drive, within permit season (March to September inclusive), click here to book.

We hope you have enjoyed this short blog, please feel free to use the buttons below to share!