Stirlingshire, the link between the Highlands and Lowlands, stretches from the fringes of Glasgow to the great mountain barrier across Central Scotland, and forms the isthmus between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. It links the fertile Lothians with the rich districts of Fife and Kinross, and its county town is the gateway to Perth and the north and to all the Lowland counties of the west.
The extensive carse, with decaying castles, modern mansions and snug farmhouses, villages and towns, cornfields and meadows, is flanked on one side by the Ochil Hills and on the other by the broad, irregular Lennox Hills which are known under four different names, according to the parishes in which they are principally situated – the Gargunnock Hills, the Fintry Hills, the Kilsyth Hills, and the Campsie Fells.
Away on the west the hills round Lock Lomond rise in wild and barren loneliness. Eastwards is the Carse of Falkirk, a fertile countryside with Falkirk lying in its midst among the smoke of factories and workshops and with tall chimneys rising out of the reek.
There are few counties with so many historic associations. Along the southern slopes of the Kilsyth Hills and the Campsie Fells skin-clad Caledonian waited to pounce upon the Roman legionary who built a wall across the county to keep the wild inhabitants in check.
The great drama of national independence was played out at Falkirk, Stirling and Bannockburn, where Wallace and Bruce fought for freedom. Internal feuds followed those struggles. After Bannockburn, the battle of Sauchieburn seems a mere skirmish, although King James III lost his life in the flight from the combat. On the hillside above Kilsyth, Montrose routed the heavily-armed Covenanters, while on their retreat from Derby in 1746, Prince Charlie’s men routed Hawley’s dragoons at Falkirk.
Strathendrick and Strathblane have their links with Rob Roy and his caterans. The Carron was a peaceful stream from the moors above Denny until the Cadells and the Roebucks built their ironworks. The Forth was respected for its usefulness as a dividing line between the Highlands and Lowlands until its commercial utility eclipsed any other claim it had to fame.
Most of the county can be seen from the ramparts of Stirling Castle, which has withstood many sieges. From its peculiar position in the heart of a plain, it commands a prospect which is probably unsurpassed by any in the country.
On the north the rugged Grampians rise ridge on ridge beyond the Ochils. On the west you can distinguish the summits of Ben Lomond, Ben More, Ben Ledi, and many more familiar peaks. On the south a vast fertile region extends from the Campsies to the Pentlands. Across the valley, immediately in front, is the Wallace Monument, a lofty baronial tower crowning the Abbey Craig, and near it is the oddly-shaped Dumyat, the most picturesque peak of the Ochil range.
The town of Striling, built on the slopes of the castle rock and round the bridge spanning the Forth, was marked out by Nature for a frontier town.
Two main streams unite to make the Forth - the Duchray, rising on the slopes of Ben Lomond, and the Water of Chon, whose source is on the Perthshire border.
Ben Lomond can be reached by following Duchray Water. Above Aberfoyle the valley narrows, and then broadens into Glen Dubh. In parts the glen is narrow – a winding corridor between the hills which, on the west side, rise gradually to the heights overlooking the Pass of Balmaha and Loch Lomond. The softness of the Carse of Stirling and Flanders Moss is absent, but in its place is a strangely magnetic quality of grandeur.
The Duchray valley provokes the wayfarer to follow it higher and higher to see what heights of magnificence it is going to lead. Ruined cottages and a neglected cemetery in Glen Dubh tell of a time when many people lived among these hills.
Down the slopes of Ben Lomond leap foaming burns to make the Duchray. A dark and fearsome corrie about 1000 feet deep goes far back into the massive bulk of the ben. Up either side of this chasm, where snow lingers long into spring, climbers can scramble to the summit, to descend by the easier path on the south-western shoulder of the mountain to Rowardennan and Loch Lomond.
Loch Lomond is beautiful at all seasons and in all moods. In winter, when the hills are snow-clad, the air crisp and clear, and when the sun’s slanting rays are flashed back with intensified brilliance from hill and dale, island stream and loch, this countryside looks like a scene in a pure, un-fallen world.
In spring and early summer its rugged sublimity is toned down and enriched with the freshening touch of these seasons of beautiful promise and more brilliant fulfilment. Then the bays and bold, defiant promontories are decked with overhanging woods which bathe their roots and trim their tresses by the limpid waters of the loch. Wild flowers and fruit bushes carpet the woods. Even the waves breathe out their soul in music as they kiss the pebbly shore. It is easy to dream that you have been transported to the islands of the blessed if you visit the many charming islands which are scattered about the lower end of the loch.
In autumn, when the landscape puts on its reception robes of purple, gold and russet, it is easy to understand how the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond have become the most besung region in the world.
On the west, Loch Lomond marks the boundary of Stirlingshire. Down the lochside a road runs to Drymen and Strathendrick, through the Pass of Balmaha.
In West Stirlingshire there are many picturesque spots. The clachan of Flintry, for example, is seldom reached by the billows of the hill-tops. The magnificence of Strathencrick at this point strikes a vivid contrast with the barrenness of the open moors round Endrick’s source in the Gargunnock Hills. And over the hills behind the village is Campsie Glen, with its gorges and linns, and where water roars as it falls over the Wee Alicompen and Muckle Alicompen. After the wild scenery of the glen and Craw Road, which joins Fintry and Lennoxtown, leads to the exposed heights of the Meike Bin and Leckit Hill, and the hill track down Garrel Glen to Kilsyth.
And there is Killearn, under the shadow of Dumgoyne, western outpost of the Campsies, with the view down Strathendirck to Loch Lomond and its green archipelago. Below is a wonderland of many trees rising on either side of Boquhan Glen, and across the Blane Valley is the high ground which conceals the glorious disorder of the Whangie, a yawning chasm which has attracted geologists from every corner of the world.
This whole region teems with romance, and processions of people seem to steal back along the pathways. Did not Rob Roy steal his last horse at Ballikinrain, and make for his home at Craigroyston through the Pass of Balmaha? And did not Bailie Nichol Jarvie and his companions on their eventful journey to Aberfoyle pass through Drymen, and was it not from the height behind Drymen that the Bailie exclaimed with pride: “There’s the Forth”?
In this corner of Stirlingshire there is also the Pot of Gartness, a famous salmon leap, and between Fintry and Kippen there are enchanting spots in the glens which penetrate the dark crags, where illicit distilling was long practised.
The River Carron has its source among the hills south of the Endrick. The watershed is crossed on the road from Lennoxtown to Finty, not far from the Wee Mountain Well with its memorial to the Kirkintilloch poet, James Slimmon. From this moorland, which is as wild and desolate as any stretch in Scotland, the Carron runs eastwards, passing under the old road from Kilsyth to Stirling. On the hillsides above the valley are reservoirs for supplying Falkirk, which can be approached by following any of the neglected drove roads used when cattle were taken to that town’s famous trysts.
A road follows the Carron to Denny, and on to Camelon and Fakirk through Stirlingshire’s industrial area. The countryside round Falkirk is flat, and the Carron moves slowly between banks adorned with hawthorn. Beyond this pastoral scene derricks and cranes raise their mighty arms over Grangemouth, at the eastern end of the Forth and Clyde Canal.
Northwards and westwards from Grangemouth stretches a region of collieries, right to the outskirts of Stirling. At Higginsneuk a new bridge across the Forth links this corner of the county with Kincardine in Fife; higher up a railway is also carried across to Alloa. Above that railway bridge are the winding links of the Forth which sweep round haughs to Cambuskenneth Abbey and Stirling.
On its north-eastern borders Stirlingshire has for neighbour Scotland’s smallest county – Clackmannan – with a few small towns within its bounds and the pleasant scenery along the banks of the Devon and in the glens which thrust their long arms into the heart of the Ochils.
The green slopes of the Ochils cut off Perthshire from Stirlingshire and Fife, and the River Devon, after having made a circuit of this range, falls into the Forth at Cambus, almost opposite the spot where it rises on the opposite side of the hills.
One of the most popular excursions from Stirling lies along the foot of the Ochils, past Blairlogie, with the old Kirk of Logie, ivy-clad and situated at the end of a by-road to Sheriffmuir, to Menstrie, Alva, Tillicoultry and Dollar.
From the summits of the Ochils the view is far-reaching and beautiful. Dumyat, behind Blairlogie and Menstrie, is not so high as either King’s Sear, near Dollar, or Ben Cleuch, near Tillicoultry, but it is more picturesque.
Southwards is Alloa, on the Forth, and as the eye travels eastwards along the river, Kincardine and Culross soon come into the picture. Dollar, at the eastern extremity of Clackmannan county, is the gateway to upper Glendevon.
Into the Devon, which meanders for thirty miles, flow the Sorrow and Care Burns, which run one on either side of Castle Campbell, and converge below it.
The modern life of Dollar circles round the Academy, a fine example of Grecian architecture, founded in 1818 by means of part of a fortune left by Captain John McNabb to benefit the poor of his native parish. He grew tired of the quietness of rural life, and the sea holding for him an irresistible appeal, he embarked at Kincardine-on-Forth. While quite a young man he became a master mariner, and in 1780 he entered into the ownership of some vessels. Before the end of the century he had amassed a considerable fortune.
In 1880 an old man visited Dollar. He had a talk with the schoolmaster, to whom he indicated that someone intended to benefit the village from an educational point of view. Two years later the parish minister had sent to him a copy of the will of Captain John McNabb, from which it was found that the old man who had visited the village two years before had left £56,000 to benefit the poor of his native parish.
Above Dollar the Devon becomes wild and romantic at the Cauldron Linn, a series of falls into a grand and gloomy rocky basin.
Tillicoultry and Alva Glens have each their own attractions. They lead to the heights and on to Sheriffmuir, which rises to a desert tableland, where Highlanders mustered before the most inconclusive battle in Scottish history. Burns, during his visit to Harvieston, found inspiration in crystal Devon:-
"How pleasant the banks of the clear-winding Devon,Hill-paths cross the Ochils from Dollar to the road through Gleneagles to Auchterarder, and from Dollar and Tillicoultry over King’s Seat and down Glen Bee to Blackford.
Between the Ochils and the Forth the land is flat. About four miles south of Tillicoultry is Clackmannan, the county town, with its old tower which, tradition alleges, was a favourite residence of Robert Bruce. Two miles to the west is Alloa, famous for its breweries, and from this town you may wander back towards Stirling by the links of the Forth, which enclose large peninsulas of fertile soil, hence the old rhyme:-
A lairdship o’ the bonnie links of Forth