Callander

Crags, fault line and planned town

Callander Crags rise directly behind the town, a wall of wooded rock with a cairn first built for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and restored to commemorate Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. The steep trail starts behind the shopping street, and from the crag edge the view splits in two: north into Loch Venachar, Ben Ledi and the Trossachs, south to Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. The Highland Boundary Fault runs just to the north-west, so Callander sits on a seam, older folded mountains on one side and gentler Lowland farmland on the other.

The town itself is a single long Main Street of stone shopfronts standing directly on the pavement, gable to gable, one or two storeys, with Ancaster Square opening off it. It was laid out in 1739 and the plan has barely moved since. Many of those buildings now hold independent shops and places to eat.

Start with the pies. Callander Taste of the Trossachs, a family shop opened on Main Street in 2012 by David and Rachel Stewart, took Diamond Awards at the 2017 World Championship Scotch Pie Awards for its MacSween's haggis-and-steak pie and its Breakfast Pie; the Breakfast Pie also won the Maclean's Cup for best savoury pie, and a steak, mince and red onion pie had taken gold the year before. A few doors along, D. Campbell & Son has been a butcher at 28 Ancaster Square since 1949, making its own sausages, haggis, black pudding and ready meals and selling award-winning steak pies. Deli Ecosse at number 10 stocks Scottish cheeses, preserves and free-range eggs and runs a café with an all-day breakfast, homemade soup and afternoon tea. Main Street Bakery turns out pies, bread and filled rolls. It is a working high street that happens to cook well.

Pies, shops and old-bank stonework

Not everything on the street sells food. King's Book Shop at number 93 is a second-hand and antiquarian shop with a reading garden, a bindery and a small publishing sideline, and it earned a chapter in Anne Scott's 2011 book on bookshops. Creative in Callander is a not-for-profit collective run by local artists, showing paintings, prints, sculpture, jewellery and ceramics from around forty makers at a time, while Galleria Luti deals in contemporary Scottish art and glass. James Bayne's still sells fishing tackle, outdoor kit and permits.

The Old Bank Coffee House sits at 5 Main Street in an ornate blonde-stone building put up in 1883 for the Commercial Bank of Scotland, probably the last work of David Rhind, who designed more than eighty banks across Scotland. It now does full Scottish breakfasts, Scotch pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, eggs Benedict and Royale, and its own pavlovas and apricot-almond meringues, and it lets dogs into the small restaurant.

A mile out at Kilmahog, the Lade Inn is a family-run pub beside the A84 with a small bothy bar, a real fire, a garden looking toward Ben Ledi, and three house cask ales — WayLade, a creamy blonde bitter; LadeBack, a balanced amber; and LadeOut, a dark ale with chocolate and liquorice notes. The kitchen does a steak and real-ale pie made with the pub's own beer, North Sea haddock and chips, breaded Scottish scampi and Mackie's ice cream. Dogs are welcome in the bothy bar and receive a biscuit and water. The attached Scottish Real Ale Shop stocks more than 210 Scottish beers from over forty microbreweries, and the pub runs a Trossachs Beer Festival from late August into September.

Pubs and restaurants from Main Street to Kilmahog

On Main Street itself the Waverley pours Greene King Abbot and Morland Old Session Hen, does a family menu of burgers, fish and pasta and a Sunday roast, and admits children to the seated area until late in the evening. The Crown has been serving since 1740 and lists steak pie, North Sea haddock, haggis with neeps and tatties, Invertrossachs trout and lamb casserole, cooked by a chef named Leo, with Harviestoun Haggis Hunter on the bar. The Riverside Inn on Leny Road, once the Clansman, breaks into snug corners with live music at weekends and a rear garden. The Dalgair House Hotel keeps a locals' Back Bar with pool, darts and a jukebox and a patio garden behind, with Greg's Bistro on the front for cooked food and cocktails.

For something else, the old Crags Hotel on Main Street now holds Desh, an Indian restaurant and bar — veg pakora, chicken tikka masala, lamb rogan josh, paneer butter masala, chicken vindaloo, lamb chops. The building opened in 1852 as the Shaftesbury, one of Callander's temperance inns, and did not sell a drink until 1952, when the bar offered exactly one heavy beer and one whisky.

Several walks start close to Ancaster Square. The Callander Meadows circuit follows surfaced riverside paths for about 1.8 km; a shorter tarmac loop from the riverside car park has two-way gates wide enough for wheelchairs and buggies. The meadow acts as a flood plain during spate conditions. The riverside circuit passes the Dugald Buchanan stone and follows the Teith towards the meeting of Eas Gobhain and Garbh Uisge. For a longer outing, the 3.5-mile Bracklinn Falls Circuit descends to the bridge over the Keltie Water gorge, then climbs through forest and returns by a minor road; keep children close near steep drops and deep water. The Three Bridges route crosses the Teith, threads Coilhallan Wood and passes Samson's Stone, a glacial boulder. West of town, the former Callander and Oban railway is a path and cycleway towards Kilmahog and the Falls of Leny. The Rob Roy Way passes through Callander, where the 30-mile Great Trossachs Path begins its route to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond.

Walks, play and layers of history

There is a good deal for children beyond the walks. McLaren Leisure on Mollands Road has a swimming pool, soft play, a sports hall, a café and a climbing wall. Camp Place Play Park was rebuilt in 2022 with a multi-play frame, a net-rope climber and outdoor gym kit, including one exercise bike that charges a phone while you pedal it. Off Leny Road, the Club House runs a nine-hole mini-golf course, sold as two rounds, with a lollipop for a hole in one and a dog-friendly café. The Hamilton Toy Collection displays the family's toys over two floors, including model railways, dolls and die-cast cars; its collectors' shop sells vintage and new toys, including puppets. Callander Golf Club, laid out on high ground and traditionally attributed to Old Tom Morris in 1892, looks across to Ben Ledi and singles out its 15th as a famous par three.

The rest is seasoning. Callander was built on purpose: James Drummond, third Duke of Perth, laid it out as a manufacturing village in 1739, planning Ancaster Square for army pensioners and filling many of the small houses with hand-loom weavers. He backed the Jacobite rising of 1745, lost, and forfeited his estate to the Crown, and it was the government's commission for forfeited estates that finished much of the town you now walk through. Long before that the Romans built a fort at Bochastle, below the Pass of Leny; part of its western earthwork remains visible. The railway arrived in 1858 and left in 1965, when a landslide at Glen Ogle blocked the line for good and the trackbed became the path west.

Two former residents are worth knowing. Callander supplied the location work for the fictional town of Tannochbrae in the BBC series Dr Finlay's Casebook, which ran from 1962 to 1971, with Bill Simpson as Dr Finlay. And Helen Duncan, the spiritualist medium sentenced in 1944 under the Witchcraft Act of 1735, was born in Callander and recorded at 96 Main Street.

Getting here and the walkers' return

Getting here takes a little planning, because the railway is gone. The nearest useful stations are Dunblane, about eleven miles off and best reached by taxi, and Stirling, seventeen miles away with a direct bus. The A84 brings you in from Stirling and the M9, and Midland Bluebird's service 59 links Callander with Doune and Stirling. Once you have a base, the country opens quickly: Loch Katrine and its Victorian steamer the Sir Walter Scott lie ten miles west, Doune Castle and the riverside Deanston Distillery are about fifteen minutes toward Stirling, and Blair Drummond Safari Park, with its drive-through reserves and more than three hundred animals, is a full day out just beyond.

Dorothy Wordsworth passed through in September 1803 and wrote that "the country near Callander is very pleasing; but, as almost everywhere else, imperfectly cultivated." Two centuries on, the shape of the place has not changed: a straight stone street with mountains standing at one end of it. By late afternoon walkers drift back from the hills into the butchers, bakers and pie shops along Main Street.