Locomotoring

Autumn is the best time to visit Perthshire…..

Our first pitstop after leaving Edinburgh was Dunkeld, a cute little town not too far from Edinburgh. The nightime stay was to be at Pitlochry, another cute little town just 9 miles north of Dunkeld. We had planned for an easygoing day, a long lunch followed by rambling along the River Tay or the Hermitage Woods, visiting the Dunkeld cathedral, hugging the last standing Birnam Oak and exploring Beatrix Potter Hilltop house and garden. However, plans do go awry, as they did in our case. The heat wave that was running amok through Europe was also nipping at the heels of Scotland. It was the first clear day since reaching Scotland. Perthshire was well over 80F in shade.

The morning was spent trying to get our rental car and then being anxious around the roundabouts ( anxious is not quite the right word, is there an english word for confused+amused? ) . By the time we had reached Dunkeld, it was well after lunch hour. It was hot and even the Aran bakery fare had wilted under the heat. It was going to be hot well into early evening. So we limited our plans to exploring the shaded “must-see” Hermitage Woods (link).

Perthshire is known as the “big tree country”. Hermitage Woods is the result of tree growing efforts by the Dukes of Atholl. Apparently, seeds were shot from cannons! Douglas firs, first brought over as seeds from North America, grow tall in the Hermitage Woods. And the Dukes were fond of Japanese larch trees. So the firs are interspersed by Japanese Larch and the native trees. The overall appearance looks like mixture of pine and temperate forest. Autumn is the best time to visit Perthshire when the trees turn the color of gold, red, copper and amber.