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The Highland fault line slices through Scotland, sweeping southwest to northeast - on one side hills, on the other plains, albeit sometimes bumpy. One of the passes into the mountains lies north of Crieff where the spectacular Sma’ Glen, in fact part of Glen Almond, was used by General Wade to build his great north road into the Highlands in the early 18th century. Its route goes to remote Amulree dominated by the hotel built as an inn for cattle drovers and a King’s House for travellers. These dotted Wade’s roads, each a day’s journey apart. The old route continues over the hills to Aberfeldy, but now as the branch of a larger road that runs along Strathbraan. This valley was one of the last strongholds of the Perthshire dialect of Gaelic.
The Braan, named after the great hound of the legendary Fingal, froths into a waterfall overlooked by the National Trust-owned Ossian’s Hall and the Hermitage before joining the Tay at Dunkeld. A bridge across the river links Dunkeld and Birnam.
Beatrix Potter spent summers here, staying at Dalguise House. A visitor centre and memorial garden commemorates her ‘Tales of Peter Rabbit’ for it was Birnam where she wrote the book, creating the characters of Peter, Jeremy Fisher and Mrs Tiggiwinkle.
Today Dunkeld is home to a thriving folk music scene founded by Dougie McLean and centred on the Taybank Hotel. The music of Dunkeld was once plainsong.
The ruins of an ancient cathedral stand dreaming on the north bank of the Tay surrounded by stately trees. Once it housed the relics of St Columba, but these were lost in Viking raids in the 9th century. The cathedral was destroyed in a later barbarity. A local laird stripped it at the Reformation, and the pretty little houses leading to it today replaced those burnt in a siege and battle in 1689.
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