Tag Archives: Bridge of Allan

Heron on Allan Water

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Apparently the Saturday before Christmas has been named Panic Saturday by somebody or other usually called THEY or THEM. With that in mind I thought it was best to avoid any big towns or cities, so we drove along to Bridge of Allan for the day.

After having a mooch around the vintage charity shops there (didn’t buy anything) we took our usual walk along to the bridge. Here’s a view of the river, the bridge and a bit of the town we took a while ago.

Allan Water at Bridge of Allan

This is the view from the opposite side of the bridge.

Allan Water from Bridge

We wanted to see if the heron was around yesterday – and he was as you can see.

Heron at Bridge of Allan

He’s quite well camouflaged – or is it a she? A bit blurred in this one:-

Heron again

I recently heard someone saying that herons are supposed to be bad luck, which is weird because I’ve always feel that it’s a happy thing if I see a heron, and an elderly lady once pointed one out to me which was in the Waters of Leith and she said she always felt it was a good day when she saw one. What do you think, bad luck or good luck? Min you my mother always said peacocks were bad luck but I love their feathers so I ignore that and have a lot of the feathers in vases. I suppose I’m just not very superstitious about things like that.

Anyway, as you can see the Allanwater was looking very full and fast on Saturday, as you would expect, given the amount of rain we’ve had over the last month or so, and still it comes. Quite depressing really but I will begin to feel better about everything after the winter solstice – when the nights begin to get lighter again, slowly, slowly but surely.

Robert Louis Stevenson at Bridge of Allan

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We really like Bridge of Allan, which is a very small town (or is it a large village?) in Stirlingshire, not far from Stirling. It has some lovely views and good hillwalking nearby and also the Stirling University Campus is there so it always seems to be a thriving community, with a nearby film theatre too.

In fact we looked at a couple of houses there but decided against moving there, mainly because the house which we sort of liked had a very wee garden but worse than that it almost backed on to the only women’s prison in the whole of Scotland. The house was about 100 yards away from a huge perimeter fence. I would just have found that outlook too depressing, especially as I’ve been told that most of the inmates are suffering from mental problems and are on suicide watch. I think the estate agent was doing that thing beloved of such people, namely changing the location to something more salubrious, the house should really have been marketed under the place name Cornton.

Anyway, it was when we were having a look around the town for the umpteenth time that I noticed this plaque on a wall just off the High Street.

RLS Bridge of Allan

It says that Robert Louis Stevenson and his family often stayed there for holidays. I don’t blame them, it must have been a nice change from smoky Edinburgh, which at that time was often called Auld Reekie. Apparently Charles Dickens was also a regular visitor.

I grew up in a town with two rivers in it, the Clyde and the Leven and for me a town has to have a good river and bridge to qualify as a ‘proper’ town. It usually means that it has been settled for donkey’s years, a place with a long history. Bridge of Allan fits that bill too, and as you can see from the photo below it also has a resident heron which is often to be seen close to the bridge. It actually moved this time but it wasn’t fishing, just sorting out its feathers.

heron

If you want to see more images of Bridge of Allan, have a look here. To read more about the town’s history have a look here.

Looking Around Stirling/Clackmannanshire

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You might know that we’ve been planning on moving house for quite a while now, it’s time we downsized now that we have an empty nest, our house is actually up for sale at last. As neither of us come from Fife originally we thought it would be nice to move a bit closer to the west, maybe to the Stirling area as that’s nice and central for both east and west Scotland.

So on Wedenesday we thought we would drive to the Stirling/Clackmannanshire to do some more research on the towns and villages there. It was a gorgeous day, in fact a wee bit too hot. I had an idea that the village of Menstrie would be worth taking a look at. Scenically, it’s beautiful, just what I love with easy access to lovely hills, Dumyat in particular, and a woodland walk which we must try out some day when we have more time, but the town/village of Menstrie is really small and doesn’t have much in the way of anything amenities-wise. So we won’t be moving there. The trouble is that where we live at the moment is in a perfect location for shops, library, museum, theatre and of course a great park, I don’t think we could contemplate moving somewhere which doesn’t even have a teeny library, no matter how gorgeous the nearby hills are.

Menstrie

From Menstrie we drove on to Doune which has a bit more life about it but still feels very rural, it isn’t so close to hill-walking areas. It does have an antiques centre though and we had a look around there, I didn’t buy any ‘stuff’ but did buy two books: Katawampus by Edward Abbott Parry and Keep the Home Guard Turning by Compton Mackenzie.

Then we went on to Bridge of Allan which I really like, it’s in a lovely setting, has a decent looking library and the Stirling Uni campus is on its doorstep which ensures there is a bit of life around the place, it isn’t preserved in aspic like some places. But house prices are quite a bit higher there, could we afford the sort of house that we would want to retire to?

We had dinner at Bridge of Allan and after that we had a walk around the town, there’s a bridge at the end of the main street, obviously what the town gets its name from as it spans the Allan Water. The town ticks quite a few personal boxes as I love to be able to stand in the middle of a town and look up and see hills, and I also prefer towns which have rivers running through them, and a bridge too of course. Jack spotted a heron standing really close to the bridge. I love them, they’re so patient and quite comical looking too, especially when the wind ruffles their feathers.

Heron

Joan Kyler sent me this link to some gardens in that area which were featured on the Beechgrove Garden Bridge of Allan gardens, thanks Joan, yet again I’m getting ‘local’ info from someone 5,000 miles away!

It was a lovely drive back towards Fife in the late evening but when we got about five miles from Kirkcaldy the haar (sea mist) was rolling all over the place, it doesn’t half make the temperature drop. I wondered if it had been like that all day as sometimes happens on the Fife coast, that made the Central region seem all the more enticing, just think – no more haar!

Birthday Boy

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We had a meal out at the Westerton Arms in Bridge of Allan near Stirling a couple of nights ago. It was Gordon’s 23rd birthday, how time flies.

The meal was really lovely, the only thing that was a bit disappointing was the size of the pasta dish which Duncan ordered. He has the biggest appetite but his mushroom ravioli was about half the size of all the other main courses. So if you are really hungry, don’t go for the pasta.

My husband took the photograph and I was sitting too far back!
The birthday boy is on the right with his lovely ‘bidey in’ Laura opposite him. I’m the nearly invisible red head in the middle, I’m only 5’3 but Laura is tiny and I always feel like a cart-horse beside her. Duncan, our eldest is on my right. A jolly good night was had by all.

I haven’t had a look at the on-line reviews but I’ve been told that one of them complains that the Westerton Arms is pretentious, but it certainly is not, the person who wrote that review must have been used to greasy spoon cafes.

As you can see, we all had puddings and Laura and I chose the hot Black Forest pudding with white chocolate sauce and ice-cream which was a lovely variation of that 1970s-80s staple of Black Forest gateau. But all of the desserts were lovely, for once. Sometimes they look so much better than they taste which leaves you cursing when you realise it must have been about a thousand calories. Not that I’ve ever counted a calorie in my life, I just walk the excess off.