At the Crianlarich Store you can buy a pie and heat it in the shop's own microwave before carrying on up the West Highland Way. Bryan and Isla Craig run the place, a licensed general store and Post Office that carries Argyll Bakeries bread and pies, Kintyre free-range eggs, Gourlay Butchers sausages and burgers, and beer from the Loch Lomond and Arran breweries, including a Loch Lomond ale named after the Way itself. Fresh fruit and vegetables arrive six days a week, the shop keeps walkers' first-aid supplies behind the counter, and it will deliver groceries to your rental if you order ahead.
The village stands in Strath Fillan, about eight miles north of the head of Loch Lomond, with Ben More, Stob Binnein and Cruach Ardrain rising around it. Crianlarich has repeatedly been a junction: two military roads crossed in the 1750s, the railway arrived in the 19th century and split into the Oban and Fort William branches, and in the 20th the A82 and A85 joined too. The name is Gaelic for "low pass", which is more or less the whole explanation.
For food, the Rod & Reel sits on Main Street in the centre. Its menu has listed homemade steak pie, haggis, neeps and tatties, chicken curry, fish and chips, poached salmon and macaroni cheese, though it is worth checking the day's board; reviewers single out the steak pie in particular. Dogs are welcome, there is a garden, and cask ale appears on the single handpump seasonally, so do not count on it in winter.
The Best Western Crianlarich Hotel keeps a public bar and a larger Highland Lounge with log fires, both open to non-residents. The menu is more ambitious: Cullen skink, a trio of hot- and cold-smoked salmon with salmon mousse, Crianlarich chicken with Stornoway black pudding, haunch of venison with haggis rösti, and a Highlander pizza topped with haggis, black pudding, bacon and cheddar. Citylink coaches to Glasgow, Fort William and Skye stop beside the hotel, though it is worth checking the current timetable.
Ben More Lodge, an informal mountain lodge with a restaurant, bar and café, fills with walkers coming off the hill. Karen N., staying in April 2025, wrote of it: "Great food too, would recommend the steak pie."
The walking starts at the door. Two short community-woodland trails loop out from the village: the Inverardran Forest Trail is half a mile through young woodland with views of Ben More and Cruach Ardrain, and the Village Trail follows a burn through rowan, alder and birch where you may spot red squirrels. Crianlarich is one of the easier places to join the West Highland Way, and the day south to Inverarnan runs about seven miles through Glen Falloch. Ben More itself is 1,174 metres and relentlessly steep above Benmore Farm, usually climbed with its neighbour Stob Binnein. It is a serious mountain day rather than an afternoon out.
The parish church, a small harled Gothic building of 1901 with red-sandstone dressings, closed in June 2024 and was put up for sale; the congregation now meets in the village hall. The station has been here since 1894, with direct trains to Glasgow Queen Street, Oban, Fort William and Mallaig, and the Caledonian Sleeper calling on its way to and from London. There is free parking and a waiting room, though no step-free access to the platform.
By the road stands the war memorial, a kilted soldier in full kit on a pink-sandstone plinth, put up around 1922. Walkers pass it most mornings on the way to the hill, boots already muddy and a warm pie from the store somewhere in a pocket.