Kilmahog

Ales, Food and the Bothy Bar

Three cask ales are exclusive to the Lade Inn: WayLade, a fruity blonde; LadeBack, a sweet brown; and LadeOut, a chocolatey dark. They are brewed for this one pub's cask supply, which sits just off the A84 a mile north of Callander, where the Rob Roy Way and National Cycle Network Route 7 pass the door. Next to it, under the same family, the Scottish Real Ale Shop stocks more than 180 Scottish ales from over 25 breweries, which is a lot of beer for a hamlet this small.

Inside there is a large restaurant and a smaller Bothy bar. The kitchen runs to crispy battered haggis balls with whisky sauce, haggis, neeps and tatties, North Sea haddock in the inn's own beer batter, a Scottish seafood platter, a steak and real-ale pie, and the "Big Yin", a Scottish-beef burger. The meat comes from D Campbell & Sons and the bread from Callander's Main Street Bakery. Dogs are welcome in the Bothy bar, where they are given water and a biscuit; the beer garden looks towards Ben Ledi, and folk musicians play at weekends. CAMRA calls it "popular with locals and tourists alike".

Tearoom Origins and Waterwheel Heritage

The building started as the Wayside Tearooms in May 1935, commissioned by the sisters Alie and Sheana Maclaurin. Demand for beds grew so quickly that the sisters sometimes slept in tents in the garden to free rooms for guests. The army requisitioned the place in 1939. The Park family has run it since 2005, and turned the old microbrewery into the ale shop the year after.

A short way off, the Trossachs Woollen Mill occupies a Category C-listed corn mill that was converted to wool in the later nineteenth century. It keeps its lade, sluice, gearing and a fourteen-foot timber-and-iron waterwheel. The café is named after Hamish, a Highland bull once billed as world famous; the present cattle are Hamish Dubh, Honey and Holly. You can buy a bag of feed in the shop and go and give it to them.

Chapel Ground and a Disputed Dedication

Above the road, on raised ground between the A84 and the Garbh Uisge, is the old burial ground. A chapel stood here by 1259, when it appears in the papal registers, though the parish was joined to Callander in the sixteenth century and nothing of the chapel now survives. The gabled entrance carries a bell said to be fifteenth-century and to bear the Graham arms. Among the stones is an urn-topped 1851 monument to William Macfarlan of Bencloich.

The name is Cill Mo Chùg in Gaelic, the church of St Cùg, though the dedication itself is disputed. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, passed through in 1803 and called it "a paltry village", joking that Kilmahog must mean the burial place of Hogg.

Paths from Kilmahog and Practical Connections

The walking begins at the door. The old railway to Callander is now a mostly tarmac path, just over a mile through farmland; the Great Trossachs Path runs the other way towards Glen Finglas, five and a half miles of made track through ancient woodland. For a climb, the circuit to Samson's Putting Stone starts from Callander Meadows and runs about five miles up to a glacial boulder perched high above the hamlet, said in legend to have been thrown there from Ben Ledi by the giant Samson during a contest. The earth ramparts of Dunmore Fort look down on Loch Venachar nearby.

There is no station here; Dunblane and Stirling are the nearest railheads, about eleven and seventeen miles off, and the C60 bus stops on its way up Strathyre. Callander, with its shops and cafés, is 1.2 miles down the old line, and Doune Castle, Loch Katrine and Bracklinn Falls are nearby attractions.

Beer Festival Season

When the Trossachs Beer Festival comes round, from the last Friday in August to the second Sunday in September (dates shift a little each year), the folk music that plays here most weekends simply carries on a little later.