OS Explorer map 366 – Stirling & Ochil Hills West Alloa & Dunblane. I do not own this map, and had not visited it before starting this blog. Visited for this blog 18th October 2025.
Map area link. Google Maps location links: Dunblane, Menstrie, Stirling, Tappoch Broch, the Kelpies, Falkirk Wheel, Craigmillar Castle
Just four posts ago, I mentioned that, on the way up to the Isle of Harris, Vesper and I stayed the night with my friend Geochunderer and his wife Aspirant Bookseller, in a village to the northeast of Glasgow. He and I have seen each other every now and again since our schooldays, probably a bit under once a year, but it’s tended to be either when my school friends meet up as a group, or when one of us happened to be passing near the other’s home for some reason anyway. I think it was around this March that I decided, no, there’s no need to wait for that: the Scottish Central Belt isn’t all that far away; easily weekend-trippable; I should just go and visit him! I could also maybe extend it a little and see Climbing Programmer or Little S in Edinburgh – though that didn’t end up happening this time. Geochunderer weren’t both free for a long while, but we just put a weekend in the calendar several months ahead of time. And, in October, it came around, I went up, and we had a very nice time!
I took Friday afternoon off work, and left my home in Moreton-in-Marsh at about 1pm, taking the train to Worcestershire Parkway, Birmingham, then Motherwell, where Geochunderer collected me at about 7pm. We had a quiet evening in, having dinner and making plans for the next day: it’d been the idea since we first thought of me coming up for a visit that we’d go for a walk, and we settled on a route from Dunblane to Menstrie, through the very western end of the Ochil Hills. It was that walk, plus a stop in Stirling afterwards, that brought us to this map area – Geochunderer and Aspirant Bookseller live in map 349, which I’ve posted about before – and which I’ll mainly be telling you about!
Geochunderer and I left the next morning at about 8:20am, and drove to Menstrie, which is the westernmost of a string of four towns that sit below the straight southern edge of the Ochils – the others being Alva, Tillicoultry and the amusingly-named Dollar. [1] There, we got on the #52 bus to Stirling railway station, and then a train to Dunblane.
The centre of Dunblane was very quiet but seemed nice, though it was too early to go inside the cathedral, so we just looked from the outside and walked on. The suburbs, at least in the direction we walked, were rather imposingly fancy – lots of detached, custom-built-looking houses.
Exiting Dunblane, our route took us through woods for the first few miles – Dykedale Wood and Sheriffmuir Big Wood – then came out into some heath, the views opening up to the Ochils ahead, and where we held a gate for a runner who Geochunderer informed me was one of the Scotland rugby team. We then entered Jerah, a woodland estate, ascending steadily and slowly, gradually getting to see more and more behind us – back to Dunblane, across Strathallan to the Trossachs.
In Jerah, we soon crossed a local high point and saw, for the first time, down to Menstrie ahead, and then the wide, flat expanse behind it, towards Alloa and across the River Forth. We descended, passing the ruined Jerah farmhouse, and stopped for lunch on the dam of the Lossburn Reservoir – a couple of rolls each of smoked hummus, beetroot falafel and cucumber, which we’d put together that morning, together with some nice little Higgidy halloumi pastry rolls that Tesco had provided!
The last third or so of the walk had us climb the hill Dumyat, which was much smaller than it looked – from the reservoir we only had about 150m more climbing to do, despite the top being a bit over 400m above sea level. At the start of the climb, we passed some quite little cows who had some intriguing little plastic bell-shaped things hanging under their necks, which we spent a while pondering. Since, when we got back, even Aspirant Bookseller, who’s a vet, wasn’t quite sure what they were, we felt justified in not not knowing!
It’d been a quiet walk so far, passing just a couple of people, but at the top of Dumyat there were suddenly a good 20 people who’d come up on a wider path from the far side. It’s a justifiably popular little hill – it sticks out on its own from the western end of the Ochils so has long views in all directions except to the northeast. It also has a very distinctive profile when passing it in a car, which anyone driving up the A9 to the Highlands does.
After a short hang-about at the summit, we descended fairly steeply back to Menstrie, and the walk was done! I enjoyed it – the weather was dry; cloudy for most of the walk but clearing up substantially by the end, when the views were best anyway.
We had a very short wander around Menstrie, seeing the slightly odd “Foxboy” statue and the outside of Menstrie Castle, before driving off.
Now, it was only 2pm, so we didn’t want to go right back to the house, and decided on going into Stirling to at least find a café, and maybe have a bit of a wander around.
We parked up and walked up to Stirling Castle, but weren’t really up for a deep explore, so declined the £20 entrance fee and just looked at it from the outside, enjoying the view from its elevated position across the city, and past the Wallace Monument back to Dumyat, where we were a couple of hours before!
After that, we found a café as planned, then looked around the shopping streets a bit before getting into the car to head back to the house.
That was it really – the city was pleasant, and I’d be interested in coming back sometime to look around the Castle, church, and Mar’s Wark properly. I’m normally more of one for a ruined castle that’s just bare stone and a few interpretation boards, than an intact, furnished, exhibition-ised one, but I would like to do a few of the “core” Scottish castles that pop up all the time when reading about Scottish history – Stirling, Edinburgh, Linlithgow. I keep vaguely intending to buy membership in Historic Scotland, English Heritage or Cadw (the Welsh equivalent) [2] – membership in one gives you free access to their properties, and a 50% discount on the other two’s, the latter improving to free access after you’ve had it a year. Maybe an “expensive castles of Scotland” trip is the right time to start!
That was it for this map area, but I spent a very nice next day and a half in Scotland too, which I’ll narrate in somewhat more condensed form (at least by my usual prolix standards), so that I can finish typing up my first draft on the train home!
On Sunday, it was raining all day so a big walk was out of the question, but Geochunderer and I had another great day visiting a few sites in the Falkirk area.
First was a short walk to see Tappoch Broch, which was just great – I do enjoy a broch, having seen several before, and I had no idea there were any so far south as this. It wasn’t very complete in a vertical sense, the walls just extending about six feet high, but it’s a really big one in terms of diameter, and had a nicely intact internal staircase. Close to the broch, we also saw the mysterious Torwood Blue Pool.
Our second stop for the day was the Kelpies, giant horse-head statues straddling a canal; followed by a café where I had an unexpectedly giant plate of cheese on toast with chilli jam – initially great, but a little sickly by the end – and then the amazingly cool Falkirk Wheel canal lift. Sunday evening was another quiet night in for which I made a chilli, garlic and olive oil pasta with cherry tomatoes, and Geochunderer a beetroot, goat’s cheese and orange salad – really nice, and very much just not a kind of salad I would have made.
As one longer, fun aside: during our walking and driving, Geochundere came up with the idea that, in another life, he’d like to run a little coffee trailer, pulled by an electric bicycle, which he could ride into popular wilderness areas, away from roads, to use to sell coffee to hikers and other adventurers. He liked the idea of not being always in the same place, but just sometimes turning up places and being a nice surprise for those who found him. I also mentioned my idea I’d had before for living beside a popular long-distance walking route and having an honesty shop in an outbuilding, which I wrote about in my Clun Forest post. We ended up workshopping the trailer idea a fair bit, to the point of AI-generating some logos that Geochunderer was rather pleased with!
This isn’t Geochunderer’s only such idea: he told me of an idea he shares with Aspirant Bookseller and his sister, for running a bookshop-café-bakery-christmas-tree-farm, i.e. like a farm shop café that’s also a bookshop, and the farm farms Christmas trees and sells those in season too. Geochunderer wants to be a barista and added the Christmas tree farm, Aspirant Bookseller would run the bookshop, and his sister would bake. But then, when we got back on Sunday evening, I learnt that this is more contentious than he’d made it out to be – apparently the Christmas tree farm aspect is Geochunderer’s own later addition, and not at all endorsed by the other two, who’d indeed prefer their bookshop-café not to have to be isolated out in the countryside…
On the Monday, Geochunderer dropped me at the station before he started work, and I headed into Edinburgh for a morning of exploring before travelling home in the afternoon.
In particular, I saw Craigmillar Castle, which was just great – it’s a ruin, but an amazingly complete one. Most ruined castles you go to, you can just walk around the ground floor, and maybe if you’re lucky go up a tower or two. But in Craigmillar, pretty much all the floors are intact, and you can explore dozens of little rooms and go onto the roof for a great elevated view in all directions, including north to the Old Town, Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat.
After Craigmillar, I headed north to the excellent Argonaut Books – I just find their selection really well-curated. Even in a giant Waterstones with a 10-shelving-unit science fiction and fantasy section I’ll usually find maybe 1-4 books I feel inspired to buy or note down; [3] but in Argonaut’s 2-unit section I found a good eight that were of interest, and bought three. And I just about managed to squeeze in some samosa chaat and a cha at an Indian street food shop before my train home at 2pm, having made good use of my £5.50 bus-and-tram day pass, taking four buses and one tram!
That was everything, and just a really nice long weekend. I got to spend time with a friend, see a lot of good things, but it also felt relaxed and comfortable. Visiting people is good!
[1] In Menstrie, we passed a sign for the Dollar Academy, which I jokingly commented sounded like a questionable cut-price business school; to which Geochunderer pointed out that it’s where his dad went to secondary school!
[2] I’m much more an English Heritage (/Cadw/Historic Scotland) person than a National Trust one. There is a lot of overlap, but English Heritage tends to have more of the sites I like – ruins, archaeological sites, ruined castles – while the National Trust has more big country houses. Which can be great, but are less my core interest!
[3] Opinions can be strong about bookshops: about the importance of supporting them; independents vs. chains, and physical shops vs. the online giants, especially Amazon. Personally, I do disapprove of freeloading, i.e. using a physical business just as a showroom; if you’re getting a benefit from a business you should pay for it. So I’ll only note down books to maybe buy later if I’m also buying at least one then.
But other than that, I’m very laissez faire here: I’m a big Amazon user, and am not at all guilty about that – I think it’s just a great service, and has become big mainly by just offering a really good service and affordable prices, which is a good thing. I do also love a good characterful independent bookshop, and I enjoy browsing in a high-street chain. I will go to both of those, and I’ll buy books when I do. But ultimately, I think all of these are legitimate preferences – it’s legitimate to like convenience, low prices, character, physical showrooms, in any combination. I buy most of my books online, because I mostly value prices and convenience, and buy some books physically, showing that I also somewhat value the other things. Ultimately, I think it’s fine for a service to exist in proportion to how much people choose to use it. If more people prefer price and convenience, fewer bookshops will exist; and if more prefer character and diversity, more will. Bookshops existing isn’t an intrinsic good; it’s good because people like using (and running) them. If fewer people like using and running them, too few for them to be sustainable, then that is a real and sad loss for those people that do. But it is, I think, ultimately okay that fewer will exist.
(And, not that this is a blocker for me personally, but I don’t want people to only be able to get books if they have the extra leisure time and extra psychological attention available to go to the shops; and the extra free cash to buy their books at higher prices. Price and convenience are just legitimately good.)
Visiting all the maps! 