Kirkton Glen and an over-active imagination

by - 16:59 on 01 June 2008

It is more than twenty years since I paid my respects to that old rogue and folk hero Rob Roy Macgregor at his final resting place by the old kirk in Balquhidder Glen. When we visited, on the Highlander’s grave there was a large sprig of Scots pine, laid there by the Clan Gregor Society on his birthday. But there was also some miscellaneous bric-a-brac and a large amount of coins. I don’t remember that from the old days. Nice to see the chap is still popular. (And locally based Scottish tour guide Charles Hunter tells me the money goes to charity on a regular basis.)

Talking of remembering, we (one son and two dogs) visited the grave because we had just been walking in Kirkton Glen, taking a there-and-back-again trip to the watershed to the north of Balquhidder. The path up the glen starts behind the church with the Macgregor grave. I had a memory of most of the track being in dense woodland. ‘The lower slopes of the glen are completely muffled by mature plantations’ was how I put it in the solemn and creaky style I used in a walking guidebook published way back then. So, not only was I walking with three individuals who weren’t even in existence the last time I had passed that way (in 1986), but the glen itself was completely different from my recollection. The trees had been felled around the mid 1980s and the replanting was also complete.

This meant that the head of the glen was visible for much of the way. I could recall from the first trip all those years ago that I didn’t much like it, to be quite honest – and I only put the walk into the guidebook because there was some good views and interesting botany at the top of the glen. But we plodded on cheerily enough, leaving the young woods behind for the grassy rises that lead towards the head of the pass and the base of the craggy face of Meall an Fhiodhain (anyone offering a translation?) with its ancient rock fall.

Once, these high passes were commonly traversed by the local native folk. Now they are lonely places, except for walkers or hardy anglers trying their luck with the wild trout in Lochan an Eireannaich (the little loch of the Irish – no, I don’t know why). This lonely stretch of water is also found at the head of the pass. From the nearby slope we could see north and downwards to Glen Dochart with its busy main road connection eventually leading through to the western seaboard. But, below a grey sky and with the chilling wind rising in this exposed spot, we probably felt the same discomfort and urge to drop back into the summery glens that many a Highlander of old must have felt, with only coarse plaid for protection. It just seemed a forlorn spot.

To make matters slightly more unsettling, I remembered about some tale – still current in Balquhidder and it also has appeared in print – about more than one group of walkers seeing the ghostly figure of a Highlander in 18th century garb wandering about the nearby rocks, with a large lurcher dog by his side. Oh, well, if you’re going to see the local Balquhidder ghost or things that belong to another time, then it’s somewhere like the top of Kirkton Glen that you’re going to imagine them!

So we finished our sandwiches and made our way down. Yes, you could say the place had atmosphere. 

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