On the Roods, a sweet shop has been making rock from the same premises for nearly 200 years. The Star Rock Shop works from a recipe that is 193 years old and, they insist, secret — the original a light lemon flavour, though Horehound runs it close. The man who invented it in 1833 was a mason who had been blinded and needed a new trade. It is the oldest sweet shop in Scotland, and it is still just a shop on a narrow street.
The town centre is built of red sandstone and laid out in winding streets with a one-way system to keep them intact. Kirriemuir calls itself the Gateway to the Glens, and the geography backs it up: it sits on the north edge of the Strathmore valley with the Cairngorms on the horizon and the Angus Glens — Clova, Prosen, Isla and Moy — opening up behind it.
For its size, the town drinks well. "Kirrie's been famed for its pubs and hotels and the likes of the Airlie, Thrums, Gairie and Three Bellies Brae are still going strong," a local told The Courier. The Airlie Arms is the family-run hotel in the middle of it, doing steak pie, potato soup and apple crumble, with a rotating set of weekday deals — 25% off pasta on Mondays, two battered Arbroath haddock suppers for £24 on Tuesdays. It's dog friendly and it gets busy, so book. The Thrums Hotel runs traditional music sessions every Tuesday and takes its name, like a good deal of the town, from J.M. Barrie.
The town still supports two independent butchers, which for a place this size is worth noting.
Barrie was born on Brechin Road in 1860, the ninth of ten children in a weaving family. His brother David died in a skating accident when Barrie was six; the grief that followed is generally held to be behind the boy who wouldn't grow up. He called the town "Thrums" in his novels, gifted it a cricket pavilion in 1930, and remains the only person ever granted the Freedom of Kirriemuir. The pavilion now houses a camera obscura, one of only three in Scotland, which rotates a 360-degree view of the surrounding country onto a circular screen. Beside it is the Neverland Play Park, with a pirate ship, a crocodile and a Lost Boys hideout.
The other famous son is Bon Scott, later of AC/DC, born in nearby Forfar in 1946 and raised here until the family emigrated in 1952. A life-sized bronze of him stands in a memorial garden on Bellies Brae, unveiled in 2016, and every year the town holds BonFest, three days of bands from around the world.
The walking is the point of the place. The Airlie Monument, a 65ft tower on Tulloch Hill, is a two-mile climb for a view down Glen Clova and Glen Prosen. Beyond it lie Loch Brandy, Corrie Fee and Reekie Linn, a waterfall on the River Isla a short drive out.
Dundee is twelve miles off; the town's own station closed to passengers in 1952 and is gone. The bus from Dundee takes about fifty minutes and stops in the Square, where a statue of Peter Pan stands.