The Kirky Puffer sits right on the Forth and Clyde Canal towpath, a Wetherspoon named after the small steam cargo boats that were once built and loaded here. Kirkintilloch was an inland port, a major centre for the stubby vessels known as puffers, and the town has not forgotten it. It styles itself the Canal Capital of Scotland, and the canal is genuinely the spine of the place: restored, level, traffic-free, running through the middle of town and out in both directions.
You can walk it west toward Glasgow at Maryhill or east toward Twechar, Auchinstarry and eventually Falkirk, passing the Luggie Aqueduct, where the canal crosses over the Luggie Water. Push on far enough east and you reach the Falkirk Wheel and the Kelpies, which make a natural day out for anyone already looking at boats. Closer to home, the towpath runs a rotating cast of walkers and cyclists past the back of the Kirky Puffer.
For pubs beyond the Wetherspoon, the Lion & Star on Townhead takes its name from the town's two iron foundries. The Lion Foundry ran from 1880 to 1984 and, with the Star Foundry, produced the red pillar boxes and K-series telephone kiosks that still stand on streets all over Britain, long after the works that cast them closed. The Stables, out at Glasgow Bridge, occupies former canal stable buildings and is the spot to aim for if you want to eat by the water west of the centre. There is also McGinley's on Eastside, the Broadcroft Hotel bar, and the Chase Inn out at Merkland Drive.
That the pub scene feels relatively modern has a specific cause: Kirkintilloch was a dry town from 1923 to 1967, one of very few in Scotland, under a temperance vote that held for over forty years until Glasgow overspill shifted the numbers.
Shopping centres on the Regent Centre, a 1990s mall that was opened by Diana, Princess of Wales, together with the older High Street, Cowgate and Townhead that form the medieval retail core. For a rainy afternoon there is the Auld Kirk Museum, free, in the former parish church at the Cross, telling the town's social history next door to the 1815 Barony Chambers.
Peel Park, a short walk from the centre, sits on a volcanic drumlin and holds the site of a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall, built around AD 142 on the frontier that the Romans ran coast to coast. The wall is now a World Heritage Site, and you can follow it east to Bar Hill Fort near Twechar, one of the best-preserved forts on the whole line. To the north rise the Campsie Fells.
The nearest station is Lenzie, about a mile south on the Glasgow to Edinburgh line; the A803 is the main road through town, with frequent buses to Glasgow eight miles away.
Locals shorten the name to Kirkie. One of them, Rita Cowan, married Masataka Taketsuru, a Japanese chemist, moved to Hokkaido and became known as the Mother of Japanese whisky — which is why this canal town is twinned with Yoichi.