THAT DARN WALK

A new year, a new beginning, and I was itching for a new walk somewhere. Being the holidays, transport links were minimal, so finding somewhere away from the usual haunts in and around Edinburgh was tricky. Luckily I have a personal oragniser that can help with these problems. Not the personal organiser of the leather-bound type in the 80s, but my good friend, Pauline.

So it was, on a lovely winters day, that we took a short train ride to a little old town, sheltered by the Ochil Hills just north of Stirling, its origins dating back to the Iron Age, called Bridge of Allan. By the mid 1800s Bridge of Allan had become a renowned spa town.

Just a couple of hundred yards beyond the railway station is Allan Water, which rises in the nearby Ochil Hills and eventually joins the Forth. This was the start of the first part of our walk, an old 4km path to Dunblane, called the Darn Walk, thought to have its origins back to Roman times.

A short distance along the path we came upon an old cave, with giant roots and boughs of old trees emanating from its upper edge. Beside it was a more recent bench, carved with depictions of pirates and buried treasure. The author Robert Louis Stevenson visited the area often, and it is said that the cave was one of his favourite spots and it may well have been the inspiration for Ben Gunn's cave, a character in his novel, Treasure Island. We stopped a short while for a coffee and a sandwich, kept company by a hungry Robin, flitting down to take the scraps I purposely dropped.

 

The temperature was sitting at zero for the whole day, and there was not a breath of wind. On our right the fields' fences and withered grasses were encrusted with white frost, their crystalline structures glinting in the sunshine, and the low angle of the suns rays created long shadows on the path ahead, like a scene from some spooky fairy tale of witches and warlocks.

In places the path was bound either side by stone walls carpeted in thick green moss, creating an enclosed road of sorts. Underfoot, where the path was shaded by the tree canopy bending over, the path was muddy, and where the path traced its way across open land, it was frozen hard.

The varied nature of the walk revealed something new around almost every corner, making the all-too-short walk the highlight of the day. Within a very short space of time we were in Dunblane. The town dates back to the 10th and 11th centuries, and at its heart stands a large Medieval cathedral, because of which Dunblane is often referred to as a city.

The steep high street leading up from the Allan Water also feels old in its architecture, and the buildings either side, comprising of shops and homes, were unique and distinct in their character.

Just short of the cathedral is an old post box, painted gold rather than its customary red. The tennis star Andy Murray was born in Dunblane, and the painted post box marks his gold medal win at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

A picnic lunch and coffee consumed on the bridge across the river, we now turned due west toward the village of Doune, 6km away, following the Old Doune Road, which mostly took the same line as the old railway, closed in Beaching's carve up of the railways in the 1960s. We were ahead of time to meet our bus connection and so we ambled along, enjoying the peace and quiet of the Scottish countryside in winter, with views to the snow capped mountains of Ben Vorlich and Stuc a'Chroin, which had also been visible iduring our last walk over Benarty Hill in Fife. Further west were the high peaks of Ben Ledi and Ben Lomond.

By early afternoon we were in Doune, which dates back to the 14th century, and is not only famous for Bonnie Prince Charlie having passed through in 1745, but more recently as the location for my young students film, Operatunity Knox! Doune was also once famous for the manufacture of pistols, and it is said that a Doune pistol fired the first shot of the American War of Independence. Dating even further back are the remains of a Roman Fort, from around 79AD, during the first incursion into Scotland.

So we had started along an old Roman path and now ended at the site of an old Roman Fort. From here our chariot, in the form of the number 59 bus, took us back to Bridge of Allan for our train home.