Croftamie

The But & Ben and village life

There is a hatch in the side of The But & Ben where walkers and cyclists can collect coffee and cake without going inside. The café sits in the middle of the village, in a building that used to be the Wayfarers restaurant, and a family took it on in August 2020, restored it and reopened it as a licensed café and bistro. It serves brunch, lunch, cakes, afternoon tea and evening meals. Recent plates have included porridge with berries and honey, French toast, Thai tomato soup, a seafood salad, and a haggis, cheese and chilli panini. Dogs are welcome inside and out, and there is a gazebo and a heater over the outdoor seating.

The But & Ben is the village's main food-and-drink stop, and it does more than feed people. It hosts the community council, the Scottish Women's Institute and village meetings, and the owner, Barbara, says the menu and its bistro nights were shaped by local feedback. "Community is at the heart of what we do," she puts it.

Shops and the walk to Drymen

There is no fixed village food shop. For groceries you go to Drymen — The But & Ben reckons on about an hour on foot along connecting paths — or you wait for one of the mobile fish, meat and vegetable vans, or the post-office van, that still call at the village, though it's worth checking current days.

Old railway and River Endrick landscapes

Croftamie is a thin line of houses along the A809, surrounded by working sheep and beef farms, with the River Endrick marking its northern edge. The walking is the real reason to base yourself here. A 4.5-mile circular loops between Croftamie and Drymen across the Endrick floodplain, following the old railway and National Cycle Route 7 to a narrow metal pipe bridge, then joining the West Highland Way. The John Muir Way runs through on the same dismantled line, right past the café door. From the higher ground the views open west to Loch Lomond and the Luss Hills and east to the long volcanic crags of the Campsie Fells. The Endrick area north of Croftamie is an SSSI, important for its lampreys, and you may see otter, heron, kingfisher and dipper along the water.

Croftamie's railway legacy and links

The railway is why the village grew. The Forth and Clyde Junction Railway opened a station here on 26 May 1856 and called it Drymen, despite Drymen being somewhere else. Passenger trains ran until 1934, though some accounts put the closure as late as 1951. The line fed the local quarry and Catter Mill, and each summer men came out from Glasgow to make wooden clogs beside the sawmill; at one point as many as eight blacksmiths worked the smiddy. The trains have gone, but Balloch station, a short drive away, still links to Glasgow Queen Street, the A809 runs on to Stirling and Glasgow, and a weekday C62 bus, launched in spring 2026, now connects the village with Drymen, Balfron, Fintry and Kippen.

Nearby day trips and village origins

For a day out, Balmaha and its walk up Conic Hill are fifteen minutes by car, the RSPB reserve at Gartocharn less than ten, and Glengoyne Distillery about the same as Balmaha. The name may come from the Gaelic Croit Seumas, croft of James, and the earliest parish record of it dates to 1823. The village's older features included an annual February horse fair. These days the café hosts the community council's meetings and offers a hatch for walkers and cyclists heading onto the old line.