The Old Reading Room at Pitagowan is older than its name suggests. A survey in 2006 placed it in the 18th century and found it began as a crofting unit; at some point its roof was probably raised by more than a metre, and near the top a projecting "thack stane" once anchored the rope that held the thatch down.
The village sits on the B8079 about five kilometres west-north-west of Blair Atholl, the old township on the south side of the road and the Perth-to-Inverness railway running immediately north. This is where the Bruar Water finishes its descent from the hills and meets the River Garry, coming out of wooded gorge into a shallow channel of gravel and cobble, all riffles and pools. The glen around you is mostly woodland and hill; the road and railway are there, but the trees do most of the talking.
Pitagowan itself has no pub, shop or visitor business. A short way off, the House of Bruar food hall runs to a butchery, delicatessen, bakery and smoked-fish counter, stocking Aberdeen Angus beef, venison, handmade sausages, black pudding, haggis, charcuterie and whisky. Its restaurant is a self-service country kitchen under a glass conservatory roof, doing homemade soup, handmade pies, roast pork, Perthshire lamb and, on Sundays, roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and a house peppercorn sauce.
For a pint, the Highland Bothy is the bar at the rear of the Atholl Arms Hotel in Blair Atholl, roughly five kilometres east: timber and beams, an open fire, old railway photographs on the walls. Moulin Brewery supplies the cask beer — Ale of Atholl, Braveheart, Light and Old Remedial — and the kitchen sends out cullen skink, haggis bon bons with Arran mustard, North Sea haddock in real-ale batter, and a Highland game madras built from pheasant, rabbit and venison. Dogs are welcome, on leads and off the furniture, and a large garden opens off the bar. John, 4th Duke of Atholl built the hotel, which has taken guests since the 1830s.
The walking starts close. The Falls of Bruar is a woodland circuit of about a mile and a half; the lower falls are the easy objective, the full loop a stiffer climb up steps and rougher paths past a run of waterfalls and worn rock. Robert Burns came in 1787 and left a verse petition asking the duke to plant trees around the then-bare falls; planting began in 1796, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert arrived to see the result in 1844. Thomas Garnett, a physician who visited in 1798, called it "a noble cascade ... a scene truly sublime."
Two harder routes leave from nearer the village. The Struan Kirk walk climbs for an hour to Struan Church over roots, a rocky scramble and steep drops, with the Garry gorge falling away beside you; the church itself, a plain Gothic building of 1828 (some records say 1829), keeps its original glazing and a north bellcote and shelters a stone carved with Pictish symbols, brought inside for protection. Struan Point is a longer out-and-back across heather moorland to a view over Strathgarry and Blair Atholl.
The township was busier once. The 1867 Ordnance Survey map shows fifteen roofed buildings here; by the 1990s the count was down to nine. Three hundred metres east stands Clach na h'Iobairt, a standing stone of the kind usually reckoned Neolithic or Bronze Age. In a field to the south, between the old A9 and the river, Calvine Camp No. 66 once held dozens of huts inside a fenced enclosure — aerial photographs from May 1946 record thirty-eight large huts and forty more for staff. What survives is uncertain.
Getting here is straightforward: the Pitagowan Road End stops on the B8079 are served by the 87 bus running down to Pitlochry, and Blair Atholl, five kilometres east, has the nearest railway station, unstaffed, on the line between the central belt and Inverness.
For a wet afternoon, the Atholl Country Life Museum in Blair Atholl fills the old school with the ordinary machinery of glen life — an early road-line-painting device, a reconstructed 1930s post office from Trinafour, and Scotland's only stuffed Highland cow, standing where the schoolchildren used to sit.