walkway. Turn down right to a viewing balcony above the Deil’s Caldron waterfall.
Return up wooden steps, forking right to regain the main path. It runs up to the Glen Lednock road. Turn right alongside the road, then left at a signpost onto a steep earth path through a plantation. It zigzags through pleasanter woods above, then contours left, to level ground.
Here note a path arriving from the right, but keep ahead, with a footpath sign. The path zigzags up the final rise to Lord Melville’s Monument.
The path to the Deil’s Caldron
Lord Melville was a minister in Pitt the Younger’s government of 1791, where his skilled political fixing delayed for 15 years the abolition of the slave trade. As war minister at the start of the Napoleonic Wars, he mismanaged the Flanders Campaign and bungled the siege of Dunkirk. In 1806 he was impeached in the House of Lords for embezzling public funds, but acquitted as negligent rather than actually criminal. An even bigger monument to him stands in St Andrews Square, Edinburgh.
Return down the first zigzags, then bear left on the path (previously noted) running northwest along the ridge top under tall trees. It emerges at a smoothly bulldozed track (the Maam Road). Turn down right, signposted ‘Monument Road’.
The track slants left to a bend below a small crag. Here keep ahead for a few steps to the ‘Kinkhoast Well’, a small spring equipped with a pewter mug. Its waters are good against the ‘hoast’ or whooping cough, and according to local legend also for all other difficulties from poor performance in school to dreary Sunday sermons. Continue down the track until it bends back left. Here take a bracken path downhill, to a stile onto the Glen Lednock road. Head right for a few steps, then left at a signpost for Laggan Wood. The wide earth path leads to the riverside at Shaky Bridge. A ‘shoogle on the brig’ (‘a shaking on the bridge’) was cure for any indispositions not covered by the Kinkhoast Well. (Alas, since rebuilding by the Royal Engineers, the bridge is as firm as the Millennium Footbridge in London.) The path turns downstream, then slants up left with a few wooden steps to the top corner of Laggan Wood. Here it’s joined by a right-of-way path from the left. Follow the clear path ahead, with the plantation becoming an attractive oakwood.
After 800 metres, at a waymark post, take a side path to the right. It passes a viewpoint on the left (the view currently obstructed by trees), then descends steep wooden steps towards the river. The path runs to the left, to a bend in a smooth, gravelled all-abilities path (the Lednock Millennium Footpath). Fork down right, soon zigzagging down to picnic tables at the riverside. The path continues downstream, to emerge near a car park at the edge of Comrie.
Turn right, away from the car park, onto a footbridge over the river. In another 150 metres, turn left down Nurses Lane to Comrie’s main street. Cross to the right into Manse Lane, down to the riverside. Turn right, to pass under Dalginross Bridge, then turn up onto the roadway above.
Cross Water of Ruchill to the car park.
ROUTE 5
Glen Tarken tracks
| Start/finish | St Fillans car park NN687246 |
| Distance | 14km/8.5 miles |
| Ascent | 450m/1400ft |
| Approx time | 4hr |
| Max altitude | Entering Glen Tarken 450m |
| Terrain | Tracks and a small path |
A short-cut track bypasses the ramble up Glen Tarken for a walk of 9.5km and 350m ascent (6 miles/1200ft) – about 3hr.
Parking is at the two pull-offs just opposite the public toilets at the west end of St Fillans. This is just below St Fillans’ small hydroelectric power plant, where its tailrace flows out into Loch Earn. The walk traces the water supply up into Glen Tarken overhead. With oakwoods at start and end, and grassy trackways through the moorland above, it’s a route that doesn’t go anywhere in particular but has a pleasant time along the way.
Between the two pull-offs, start across A85 up steps onto a private road at the small St Fillans Power Station (this road starts alongside the Four Seasons Hotel).
Turn left for 150 metres, then back right at a waymark post up a track. It crosses over a disused railway, then zigs back left and slants up steeply through woods. Ignore two side-tracks on the right, before the gate at the top of the trees. Roughly 100 metres beyond the gate onto open hill, the OS Explorer map marks a cup-marked rock to left of the track, but the marks aren’t very visible.
Loch Earn from Glen Tarken foot
The track slants uphill towards rocky moorland. At a junction, take the main track back up right. It soon zigs back left, through a small pass at 450m. Then it slants gently downhill into Glen Tarken. After 1km, a side-track turns down left: this is the short-cut route.
Short cut via Glentarken Burn
The short-cut track gives a walk of about 3hr, but its ford over Glentarken Burn could be impassable in spate.
From the junction above Glen Tarken, the side-track descends to pass below a hydro-scheme tunnel end, then goes through a gate. Now rather fainter, it contours left (south) across the top of a spoil heap (presumably from the water tunnel), then turns downhill to left of a stream. It fords the Glentarken Burn, then rises to join the main valley track beyond.
The main track contours along the valley side, passing some water intakes. After 3km it bends across the valley floor, before heading down-valley under the steep Creag Dhubh, then gently up the valley side. Where the main track turns sharply back right, take the smaller track ahead, slanting down towards Glentarken Burn.
After 1.6km, the short-cut track rejoins from the left. Now the track steepens downhill at the valley foot. It goes through a gate beside a sheep-dip complex, with Loch Earn visible below. In another 400 metres a cottage is visible across the stream. Immediately above a small pointy knoll, take a green track on the left. It crosses the stream by a ramshackle bridge, then contours out to the cottage. This building rejoices in views along Loch Earn, no road access, and the name of Jerusalem (NN669253).
The continuing path is invisible to start with. Contour forward (just south of east) through rushes, to pass through a fence by a gap with an old iron gate. Keep contouring, now through bracken, to a tall kissing-gate into a former plantation, now felled. The path is now visible, but narrow and little trodden. It continues at the same level to the start of the fine oaks of Glentarken Wood.
Now the path becomes a disused vehicle track, slanting gently downhill. Cross the torn-up path of tracked vehicles, a moment of World War I terrain, to continue on the previous line on a clear path.
The path crosses Allt an Fhionn by a footbridge, then descends with an old fence on its right. At a fork, the right branch is the disused railbed, but take the left to a bridge under the railway. Keep left on a track that weaves among the legs of a viaduct, then contours below the railway. After the first houses of St Fillans, the track reaches the end of the private road at the start of the walk.
Keep ahead down to the power station, and turn right down the steps to the walk start.
ROUTE
