An eight-foot statue of Sir William Wallace stands over the front entrance of St Nicholas Parish Church, carved by Robert Forrest of Carluke and set in place in 1817. Wallace has good reason to be here. In 1297 the English sheriff Sir William Heselrig killed his wife, Marion Braidfoot, in the town; Wallace attacked Lanark Castle that same night, killed Heselrig in his bed and wiped out the garrison. A plaque in the town marks where his house is said to have stood: "Here stood the house of William Wallace who in Lanark in 1297 first drew sword to free his native land."
That is the deep past. The working town runs down Hope Street and around the Castlegate. The Crown Tavern, at 17–21 Hope Street, is a long-established traditional pub that concentrates on homemade food — sirloin and fillet steaks, cheeseburgers, Sunday roasts — and keeps a section of its welcome specifically for dogs. The Clydesdale Inn, a free house in the old centre, is known for real ale and company. The Wee Man's Bar has stood in the Castlegate for generations. If you want water rather than street, the Inn On The Loch sits beside Lanark Loch in what began as a boat house in the 1900s, with fishing, a putting green and a play area next to it.
For provisions there is the Duke's Deli at 12 Castlegate, which does hampers, and two farm shops within a short drive: Overton at Crossford, with its café called the Oven and artisan bread from a local bakery, and Carmichael Estate between Lanark and Biggar, which rears its own meat and runs a tearoom. The livestock market on the town's edge is a reminder that this remains farming country as much as heritage country.
The walk everyone comes for starts a mile away at New Lanark. From the mill village the Clyde Walkway climbs through a wooded gorge to the Falls of Clyde and Bonnington Weir, about fifty minutes to the falls along the riverbank; the full circuit runs to roughly seven miles. Closer in, Castlebank Park gives you the Clyde without the climb. New Lanark itself, where Robert Owen abolished child labour and provided housing, schooling and free healthcare for his mill workers between 1800 and 1835, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001 and draws over 300,000 visitors a year.
Trains leave Lanark station on Bannatyne Street roughly every half hour and reach Glasgow Central in about fifty-one minutes; the bus interchange sits next door, and the M74 brings you in by road. In 1910 the racecourse held Scotland's first aviation meeting, where the earliest world records for flights over a mile were set. The course is gone.
Every 1 March, children gather at the Town Steeple at Lanark Cross for Whuppity Scoorie. When the small bell rings — silent since the previous autumn — they run clockwise three times around St Nicholas Church, swinging paper balls on strings, then scramble for coins thrown down in Hyndford Place. The custom has a name in print since 1890 and no one entirely agrees what it means.