After our busy day yesterday, we take a short walk into the village to take a look at Dochart Falls. Then we drive up to the nearby Ben Lawers nature reserve. There is a car park but no visitors’ centre. Do we pay to park? No. Do we turn round and retrace our steps? Again no. Do we press upwards and onwards along a single-track road with a precipitous drop on the passenger side; a road that we are not convinced actually leads anywhere? Yep. That would be the one. Ben Lawers is 1214 metres above sea level and the tenth highest Munro in Scotland. We drive pretty near to the top and I can tell it is higher than I should be venturing, as I experience some of the effects of altitude that curtailed our Peru trip. Fortunately, this time we can get ourselves back down to lower levels without too much trouble. Well eventually we can. All the sat-nav can offer is ‘turn round where possible’. Turning around on a road barely wider than the car is not going to work. I take a look at our not very detailed map. Reassuringly, this does indicate that there is a way out and indeed, eventually, this proves to be so. The scenery is ruggedly spectacular and we are certainly seeing parts of Scotland other holidays might not reach.

On the way back we take a look at the outside of the Moirlanich Longhouse, which is very close to the site and which we have failed to investigate on previous visits. It is open twice a week but not today, so we shall just have to pay a return visit to Killin, no hardship there then. An interpretation board tells me that the longhouse was inhabited by the Robertson family. Were we able to get inside, we would be able to see a  hanging lum, also knows as a hingin lum, which is, the board says, a paper lined wooden canopy to funnel smoke away from fireplace. This sounds a bit of a fire hazard to me but here is some more about them from a website that I use and recommend often.

It is time for us to return to England and we pass the Kelpies at Falkirk, 30 metre high, steel horse-head sculptures. Or possibly 60 metres high, if some websites are to be believed – big anyway. They are very impressive but difficult to detour with a caravan on the back and I was not ready with the camera.

We wend our way to one of our favourite sites near Alnwick via a supermarket stop. A quick walk round the site’s nature trail and then a lazy afternoon.