Milton of Buchanan

The mill and its landscape

The Old Mill stands on the east bank of the Burn of Mar, and it is the reason the village has a name. Built as a corn mill in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, it still holds its timber-and-iron wheel and internal gears, and water once reached the wheel through an underground channel from a raised pond above. A timber sawmill stood alongside until the early 1990s, when the whole thing became a house. Grain was probably ground here for several centuries before that.

Milton of Buchanan is small, strung along the B837 as it runs between Drymen and Balmaha on the east side of Loch Lomond. The land around it shifts quickly from forest and grazing to moorland and mountain ground, and the loch's foreshore below is pebbled in places and sandy in others. Buchanan Parish Church sits raised at the north-west edge of the settlement.

Balmaha food and supplies

For food and supplies you go the short distance to Balmaha or Drymen. In Balmaha the Oak Tree Inn has been run by Sandy and Lucy Fraser since 1997, and all eight of their children have had a hand in it; it stands directly on the West Highland Way. The kitchen does Cullen skink, vegetable pakora, a chickpea, sweet-potato and spinach curry, herb-crusted macaroni cheese, homemade steak pie, and haggis, neeps and tatties. Dogs are welcome in the bar and conservatory but not the restaurant.

The same family runs the village shop next door, which sells groceries, walking kit, wine and spirits, and Balmaha honey, and St Mocha, a coffee shop and ice-cream parlour where the beans are roasted on site and the ice cream is made in the village from local farm milk and cream. The flavours run from traditional to wild strawberry and pistachio, and there is a haggis, cheese and chutney toastie if you want something warmer.

Drymen and Conic Hill

Drymen, the other way along the B837, has the Clachan Inn on its square, said to date from 1734 and promoted as Scotland's oldest licensed inn. Its first landlady was Mistress Gow, reputedly Rob Roy MacGregor's youngest sister, and the original fireplace still hides a salt larder from the days of the salt tax. The menu runs to haggis bonbons with whisky cream, a Malaysian lamb casserole, steak pie, and fish and chips. There is a bakery and deli near the square for paninis, bacon rolls and soup, and David MacDonald's butcher's for pies, cooked meats and dry-aged beef.

Conic Hill rises to 361 metres on the Highland Boundary Fault, and from the top you can see Loch Lomond's chain of islands, the lowland farmland behind, the Arrochar Alps and Ben Lomond. The circular route from Balmaha comes through Milton, turning up Creityhall Road before climbing to the summit; the path is often muddy. A gentler low-level link, Wilkie's Path, runs to Drymen through the Buchanan Castle Estate.

Getting here and historic landmarks

Getting here is by road on the B837 or by McColl's 309 bus, which stops in the village at Creityhall Road on its way between Balloch, Drymen and Balmaha. Balloch is the practical rail interchange; trains to Glasgow Queen Street take about 45–50 minutes.

The church repays the short climb to its edge-of-village position. John Adam designed it and the mason Alexander Gowan built it in the early 1760s for the Duke of Montrose; a fire gutted the interior in 1938, and the refit above the timber panelling left the rubble walls bare. The sixth and seventh Dukes of Montrose lie in the graveyard, and the family pew is still inside. Below in the estate stands the roofless shell of Buchanan Castle, a Victorian-era Baronial mansion that served as a military hospital in the war, where Rudolf Hess was treated after his 1941 flight to Scotland.

Village life

The village keeps its own hall for meetings and fitness classes. One resident, asked what they valued, put it simply: "It's a close-knit community that is friendly, cares about and is proud of the area we live in."