Struan

Bridges, hamlets and the former inn

At Calvine, a road bridge crosses the River Garry directly beneath a railway viaduct. The original 1863 structure carries a segmental arch over the B847 and a semicircular arch over the water; a later steel-truss bridge now takes the single-track line alongside it. Joseph Mitchell engineered it for the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway, and from below the effect is of two crossings stacked one on the other.

This is Struan, or rather the scatter of hamlets — Struan, Calvine, Bruar — where the A9 and the Highland Main Line leave the green floor of Strathgarry and begin the climb towards the Drumochter Pass. The name comes from the Gaelic sruthan, a place of streams, for the ground where the Garry meets Errochty Water. You are about five miles north of Blair Atholl.

Do not come expecting a village pub. The Struan Inn, built in the 1860s and open to guests since 1863, is now let as a whole house rather than run as a bar. Its owners, Mary-Ann and Bob, kept the old room intact: "The Old Bar has been retained with its wood burning stove and impressive elm-wood bar and gantry, complete with clan crests." You stay in the same building. You cannot drop in for a pint.

Food around Struan

For a pint the nearest option is Blair Atholl, five miles down the road, where the Atholl Arms Hotel keeps an informal bar called the Highland Bothy. The menu leans hard into the region: cullen skink, haggis bon bons with Arran mustard dip, North Sea haddock in real-ale batter, haggis with neeps and tatties, and a Highland game madras made with pheasant, rabbit and venison, and Winston Churchill venison olives slow-cooked with red wine and juniper. Dogs are welcome on leads and off the furniture.

Closer to hand, a mile from the old inn, is the House of Bruar, a large country store with a food hall built around a butchery, delicatessen, bakery and smokehouse. The butchery runs to Aberdeen Angus beef, venison, handmade sausages, black pudding and haggis. The restaurant does homemade soup, handmade pies, daily roast pork and Perthshire lamb, and a Sunday carvery of rare topside of beef with Yorkshire pudding and peppercorn sauce. It is the nearest option for food shopping. Calvine's own small shop and garage closed years ago, and the primary school was mothballed in 2011.

Mills and moorland walks

If you want bread with some history behind it, the Blair Atholl Watermill grinds stoneground wheat, oats, rye and spelt on a site that has milled since at least the 1590s. Its tea room sells wholemeal and olive-oil white loaves, boiled bagels, scones and a carrot cake the bakery is not shy about.

The walking is the reason to stay here. The Struan Kirk Walk is short — a mile and a half — but graded strenuous, following grassy paths to the remote kirk above the Garry gorge, past big roots, a rocky clamber and narrow kiss gates with steep drops near the water. Struan Point climbs through heather moorland to views over Strathgarry, muddy in the wet. The Falls of Bruar is gentle at the bottom, on smooth gravel, and rough and steep on the full circuit to the waterfalls.

Struan Kirk and Clan Donnachaidh

The kirk is worth the climb. Charles Sim designed the plain Gothic church in 1828; it dates from 1829, with a north bellcote and an interior wholly rebuilt in 1938. Against the south wall the faint foundations of the earlier St Fillan's Church can still be traced. A seventh-century sandstone fragment found in the churchyard carries a Pictish double-disc-and-Z-rod, and a metre-high slab outside is cut with a simple cross on each face. The old Bell of Struan ended up in Perth Museum. There is no advertised opening time, so an open door is luck rather than a plan.

Struan is old Clan Donnachaidh ground — the Robertsons — and remains the territorial title of the clan chief; a mound upstream of the kirk once held the clan stronghold. In 2024 the clan society took over the kirk itself, and still holds its annual service there.

Buses, rails and the confluence

Buses do run. Elizabeth Yule's 87 and 887 stop at Old Struan Road End and Calvine and carry on past the House of Bruar, Blair Atholl, Blair Castle and Killiecrankie to Pitlochry, twelve miles south, though the fuller timetable is a summer one. The nearest station is Blair Atholl, unstaffed, six parking spaces and no toilets.

The station at Struan itself closed in 1965. In 1877 seventeen wagons broke loose on the descent from Dalnaspidal and ran into the stationary front portion of their own goods train, killing eighteen sheep and six pigs and badly hurting the guard, Malcolm M'Farlane. What remains is the confluence the place was named for, two waters meeting under the bridges.