Gateway to the Highlands Railway Walks with Julia Bradbury

Britain is a country that owes a great deal to its rail empire.

For 100 years, the railways dominated the development of this country.

The network that supported a global superpower.

But today, our island is home to 10,000 miles of disused lines,

a silent network of embankments, platforms and viaducts.

For me and many others, they've become a perfect platform for exploring the country on foot.

Today I'm in the bosom of Scotland

in an area that's known as the Gateway to the Highlands,

and you can see why.

Down there lie the lowlands of Glasgow and Edinburgh,

whereas up here, in the north, it's a world of mountains and lochs

and that's the world I'm heading into today for my railway walk.

That is Callander, a town that grew so rapidly during the Victorian age

that they built this mighty cairn to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen Empress,

but the story of the walk goes further back than that.

From here the railway headed north into the turbulent world

of Highlands, Scottish clans and Rob Roy.

Today I'm going to explore the story of how the railway line helped bring

civilisation to an area so famous for its history of wild violence.

On a day like today,

how could anyone not be passionate about the Scottish Highlands?

But until 1800, few people chose to venture

to these remote parts without good reason.

Today, I'm going to be walking through an area that turned itself

from feared to fashionable in the space of 60 years.

The first railway arrived in Callander from Dunblane in 1858.

It was the plan of the Callander & Oban Railway company

to build a route through the Highlands,

winding north, then west through Glen Ogle and Glen Dochart

to reach the coastline at Oban.

Further lines followed, including a branch line

serving the villagers of Killin and taking tourists to Loch Tay.

Today, the old lines have become a popular walking route and part of

a massive cycle path running from Glasgow all the way to Inverness.

It was in the 1800s that Callander really started to gain attention.

William Wordsworth, Queen Victoria, Walter Scott and, of course, the railway all came to town.

Now it's known as the Eastern Entrance to the new Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park.

The wide streets of the 1770s were certainly well thought out,

with Callander soon bustling with visitors

all demanding food, hotels and carriages to take them on

from the impressively large station.

But I wonder how many of those visitors ever intended to walk as far as me!

This will easily be my longest railway walk,

but before I set off,

let's take a bird's eye view of the route I'll be following.

Just like the steam trains, most of my walk is a long, steady climb

up into the southern Highlands.

The railway followed the river upstream from Callander,

aiming for the valley of Loch Lubnaig.

I'll be hugging the western shore of the loch,

but from the air the drama of the peaks ahead is clear.

North of the loch, the first village on my route is Strathyre,

a holiday spot for Wordsworth,

and 60 years later, the first station north of Callander.

Long before that, this was the home turf of the Clan MacGregor

and their most famous son, Rob Roy.

As the railway approached Loch Earn,

the line split with some trains forking right towards the water.

The Callander & Oban Railway swept left though, climbing noticeably as

it rounded the corner and headed straight up Glen Ogle.

Three quarters of the way up, I'll reach the signature feature of this railway, the Glen Ogle Viaduct.

Over Glenoglehead and you enter Glen Dochart.

From here it's all downhill as I pick up the old Killin Branch line.

This is where Victorian tourists would have once passed through Killin Village

on the train to reach the pleasure steamer on the shores of Loch Tay.

This is the site of the old station.

As you can see, it's now a lovely car park.

'Back in Callander, I'm meeting a gentleman at the hotel next door to the old station.

'He's a true local lad...

'..that's if you overlook his Italian origins.

'But today he and his many cousins in the area have become a modern day Scottish clan.'

Brian Luti, a good Scottish name there.

There are quite a few Italian-Scots, aren't there,

or Scot-Italians whichever way you put it?

Yeah, a lot of people came over in the early 1900s.

Italy was very poor.

Would you describe yourself as a modern-day clan?

Absolutely in every way, very Scottish.

In fact we're known in the community as the Callander mafia.

-In a nice way.

-What was this town like as a railway town?

Well, it was totally different.

I've always been mad on locomotives and trains and steam

and we used to sit on the fence and watch the trains go by.

As a child, when we had the restaurant,

I used to come to the station every morning with a wheelbarrow to pick up

the fish that came from Aberdeen on the night train, which was also the mail train.

We would pick up the fish and take it back to the restaurant.

So it brought all the fresh food and vegetables and things.

That's all gone now. It comes by lorry and van.

-It's all cars and lorries and nothing else.

-Absolutely.

There's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of buses and cars. Was it ever busier than this?

In people terms, yes.

I mean, in the last year the biggest event we had with the train,

and I had a restaurant at the time, was the Coates of Paisley, the cotton people.

They brought all their employees, 6,000 of them, to Callander in one day on a charter train,

and if you look up here, it was just like a swarm of people coming, you know.

They just came up the main street... just covered the street.

-They must have flooded the place.

-Absolutely. But that was the great old days.

They didn't come by car.

They came by train.

Why this as a meeting spot for you and I?

Well, it's built by the MacNabs, the clan MacNab.

-And who were the clan MacNab?

-They were like a local mob.

-Yes.

-I think they were the mafia.

-They were the mafia of the day!

Yeah, absolutely!

There were loads of clans, there were the MacNabs, MacNeishs.

There were the MacGregors of the famous Rob Roy ilk.

This hotel was called the Dreadnought because dreadnought was their clan battle cry. Dreadnought.

-Dreadnought, dreadnought...

-Absolutely. A rough bunch!

But there's still something to remind us of it at the front of the hotel.

Let's have a look.

-The head...

-Oh... Who's he?

He's the chief of the clan, MacNeish.

So they killed him and they thought it would be a nice idea to pop his head up there as a symbol?

Yeah, they did their things differently in those days.

-That's nice, isn't it?

-A bit macabre, I think.

Thank you very much, I might have nightmares about that!

On your way, you want to follow the railway line,

that's an old Ordnance Survey map taken in the '50s

which has the train on it, the line on it

-and hopefully it'll help you on your way.

-Thank you very much. 1957!

Oh, it's older than me.

Not older than me.

-Thank you, that's really nice.

-Bye-bye. Have a good walk!

Lovely to meet you. Thank you for the map, I appreciate it.

And so my very long trek into the Highlands gets underway.

A railway signal rather reassuringly marks the point

where I join the old track-bed.

But apart from that, the walk takes you straight into the Scottish countryside.

A few miles to the west of here is Loch Katrine, which was one of Walter Scott's favourite areas.

In fact, there's still a steamer on the loch called the Lady Of The Lake named after his most famous poem.

He was one of the first poets and writers to really romanticise about this area,

but even he said this is where beauty lies in the lap of terror,

making a reference to its turbulent past.

We are in the Highlands after all.

For Scott and his friend, William Wordsworth, the remote aspect

and the unruly reputation of these parts were of great appeal.

Their literary work, inspired by and even set in the Trossachs,

was like a 19th century PR campaign

drawing a new and rather upmarket crowd to Scotland's mountains.

This section of the river is called the Falls Of Lenny.

Now, the river meanders all the way through the valley,

whereas once upon a time,

the railway line would have cut straight through it.

Actually, this is the remaining support of a bridge

that would have taken the trains straight across from here.

You emerge from the woodland into an open patch of flower-filled meadow.

It feels like you've crossed the divide

between lowlands and highlands.

This is the southern tip of my first Loch...

Loch Lubnaig.

At 5km long, it's certainly not the biggest I'll encounter,

but tightly packed between the peaks of Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich,

it lives up to its Gaelic name, meaning "crooked".

And towards the northern end of the Loch,

the path forces you off the railway line for a short distance.

No idle diversion either... ..there's very good reason.

You wouldn't want to mess with these beasties

but they're perfectly entitled to be here.

This is, in fact, the old railway line here

and when the railway closed, a lot of the farmers and local landowners

were given the opportunity of buying their land back,

which, of course, many of them did.

Hence the lovely Highland cattle.

Let's face it, old railway beds aren't just good for cycle paths,

they're good for tractors too.

The valley bottom around the head of Loch Lubnaig provides a small area of good farmland...

..but otherwise it's a classic V-shaped glacial valley

that brought railway passengers straight into the first Highland village.

Strathyre is where Wordsworth chose to stay with his sister, Dorothy.

He came to escape the hustle and bustle of the Lake District.

You can only imagine what he'd have made of the railway here.

As in Callander, the old railway station of Strathyre is no more.

In its place, this lovely housing estate,

but in its day, Strathyre did win the best-kept station moniker, don't you know.

Beautiful maybe, well kept too,

but long before both Wordsworth and the railway,

this part of my walk, the Balquhidder valley,

was the firm territory of the clan MacGregor.

In 1603, King James VI made it a crime to carry the name MacGregor,

but this period did produce the clan's most famous son, outlaw and folk hero, Rob Roy.

Balquhidder is also the point where one railway became two.

In 1905, The Callander & Oban was joined by a line running west from here

down the valley of Loch Earn,

and today, walkers and cyclists are encouraged to follow the new line for a short distance

allowing me the bonus of an extra viaduct.

This must be Lochearnhead and there's a first tiny little glimpse of the loch just there.

Now I might temporarily have moved onto a different railway track

but I'm still on the catchily named National Cycle Route 7.

Of course, lots of railway lines have been turned into cycle paths,

but this one is pretty dramatic.

If you wanted to, you could follow it all the way from Glasgow to Inverness.

If you wanted to!

'And this is where I'm meeting someone who just might consider such a thing.

'As well as being a cycling nut, Douglas Stewart is also an access officer

'for the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.'

Have you done Glasgow-Inverness, Inverness-Glasgow?

No, I haven't, no. Unfortunately not.

Good. I think they must be crazy.

Yes, this is the section I use most often. I really enjoy it.

There aren't many people that can say Beeching did them some good!

No, that's right, controversial to the last!

It is pretty spectacular, isn't it?

As far as cycle routes go,

there aren't very many with views like this.

No, absolutely not. I think one of the great things about this route

is the number of viaducts on it. At this time of year, it's wonderful.

This is a real meeting of the ancient and the modern right at this point, isn't it?

I think as far as I understand, this was the only missing bridge in this

entire section between Callander and Killin.

This was put in for the millennium, and this was the final piece

in the jigsaw that meant that this section of the route could be up and running

and it's wonderful, I love it.

It lay unused for something like 35 years, and now we've got the benefit.

Douglas has agreed to push his bike for a short time

while he accompanies me up Glen Ogle.

From this point on there's a good seven miles of constant ascent,

and to get back onto the Callander & Oban line,

there's the steepest section of the lot.

It's really fast. It's a bit of a trudge on the uphill.

That's for sure.

You also get a great view of two munros up here.

-Next time you're up you can climb them.

-The equivalent of the Fells.

That's it, yeah. The one on the left is Ben Vorlich and the one on the right is Stuc A Chroin.

You can do them both in a day.

A long day, but they're really good fun.

To see them today with no cloud on the top is really pretty special.

-One for next time...

-That's it.

-Two for next time.

Two for next time, yeah, absolutely.

This is obviously back onto the old C&O line here.

'As you step back on to the Callander & Oban,

'you're rewarded with great views over Loch Earn

'and far below the lower railway line that ran along the length of the loch.'

There seems to have been a mishap here.

Yes, Jules, this is the site of the famous landslide which occurred in 1965.

The line was scheduled for closure by Dr Beeching in October 1965,

and literally a few weeks before that date this landslide occurred

and they conveniently used it as an excuse to shut the line early.

Presumably that must have happened a lot on the lines,

they must have been able to deal with it. It was just decided not to.

Yeah, I think, they just took the opportunity to shut the line early and save a bit more money.

The steep and unstable sides of Glen Ogle were a constant problem

for the managers of the railway.

So too were harsh winters,

when trains occasionally got stuck in snowdrifts.

Passengers were known to escape on foot using the line of telegraph poles to guide them to safety.

Today, it's the road on the opposite wall of the valley

that deals with similar conditions.

Ah-ha... So here's our proper first view.

This is it, the Glen Ogle viaduct.

What an iconic scene.

A nice sunny day as well.

'And so from an entirely unplanned landmark,

'you reach the railway's most famous intended landmark,

'the glorious Glen Ogle viaduct.'

This is obviously a very different structure from the other viaduct.

Yeah, it's interesting you mention that.

This is constructed using natural stone mortar,

compared to the Kendon viaduct which was constructed much later than this one

and it's made of concrete.

Yeah, quite different, really just the change in technology, if you like,

between the two different construction periods.

It would have been a particular highlight, I think, on the journey from Callander north.

-The passengers would...

-Without question, opening out like this.

That's it, they would get the views, the open countryside and I think it would have been a fantastic

part of the journey and a big part of what the railway company were selling to the public.

As you reach the top of the valley, the gradual gradient becomes clear.

Both the road and the railway head for the same point.

A 1:50 gradient may not sound much,

but many trains required two locomotives

to see them over the top of the pass.

There's a little stile to cross here.

Then we can get a really nice view down the Glen and see the ground we've covered.

-Pretty good looking.

-Yeah, it's fantastic, isn't it?

That's us just about the top of the Glen.

We're 700 feet above Callander, where you started.

and you hardly notice it and that shows you just how effective

the rail system was in dealing with the gradients.

We get a really nice view from here of Ben Vorlich which we couldn't see earlier.

-Yeah.

-You can the summit of Ben Vorlich there.

Doug, thank you so much for showing me everything, pointing everything out along the way.

I might nick your bike!

In 1870, the Callander & Oban Railway ended right here at Glenoglehead.

There simply wasn't the money to complete the line to the coast.

But over the next ten years the railway was extended in stages,

starting with the route west along Glen Dochart.

And in 1886, after much local campaigning,

the area acquired a new station.

These ruins in the modern area of forest

are all that remain of Killin Junction.

It was built exclusively as an exchange point

for passengers and goods arriving on a new branch line.

Up until now, I've been walking along the old Callander & Oban railway line,

but the directors of C&O didn't fancy extending the line to Loch Tay,

so that was left to the locals to build and manage their own, which they did.

It was known as the Killin branch.

My final stretch of railway walk

follows one of the most remarkable lines to feel the weight of the Beeching Axe.

'For four miles, a small engine would have rattled down the slope to Killin.

'In 1886, it changed lives in this Highland village overnight.

'And the Victorians duly flocked,

'packing into specially chartered rail trips.

'The shores of Loch Tay could now be reached from London.

'But how many of those visitors would have stopped to thank the local people of Killin?

'For they were the folk who had gathered together,

'planned and paid for this unique addition to the rail network.

'And for centuries, one family has been at the heart of Killin life,

'the Clan MacNab.'

-Hello, James.

-Hello.

-Lovely to meet you. How are you?

-Very well.

'So I'm rather honoured to have persuaded the 23rd chief to meet me

'as I arrive in his hometown.'

Try and explain to me a little bit about the territorial nature

as life as part of a clan?

Hundreds of years of ups and downs...

I don't think you could ever call the MacNabs a powerful clan.

They were a relatively small clan.

They had a great propensity for fighting on the losing side.

We eventually became...

..rather subservient to the Braidalbin Campbells.

In fact, they became the dominant people in this area.

So they were your rivals?

We were rivals sometimes,

but we married quite a lot of them.

-Inter-relations?

-Inter-relations.

What's it's like to be in this area now these days

and the railway, of course, has long since gone?

Well, as a councillor of the time, there was, I don't know what it was called,

a Board of Enquiry to discover why they were essential for the community.

As Mr Beeching said,

what lines were uneconomical?

So I had to give evidence at the Board of Enquiry and the main thing

we were worried about was getting over Glen Ogle.

It used to get terribly blocked with snow and the only feasible way,

in those days, very often was to go by train.

What about you, personally,

what impact did the dissolution of the railway have on you?

As I owned the land on either side of it,

under the titles of the railway,

it was the adjacent landowners who had first call on the thing.

So I bought it.

-So you bought the railway?

-I bought the railway.

What's left of the MacNabs now here?

Well, this island behind us here, Garbhinish,

and that island which I'm going to take you onto, Inchbuie,

and that is what is left of the MacNab lands in MacNab hands.

MacNab lands in MacNab hands, that's not easy to say.

Let's go and have a look.

'Having controlled lands throughout Glen Dochart,

'the Clan MacNab can now lay claim to just two small islands.

'They sit surrounded by the stunning Falls of Dochart.

'A sad but very proud marker to a grand history

'stretching back to 950.

'And you have to presume that the island of Inchbuie, at least, will forever remain in Clan hands.'

Here we are, this is the burial enclosure,

and you see...

what is supposed to be a niche's head, the gory head of a savage.

-The crest of...

-Which is the crest that you have on your ring?

-Yeah.

Here we are, this is the enclosure which has a gate into it and two windows.

Yeah.

You can see 15 chiefs are buried in here...

-But all MacNabs?

-All MacNabs.

This is my great uncle's grave and a great aunt who I succeeded.

My father's ashes are below there.

Where will you be buried?

I hope, you have to pick a place where there aren't too many rocks,

and I hope it'll be there.

That will be your spot?

-I have probed, I think it's all right.

-You think it's all right!

If you look this way, there's the viaduct and the railway.

Back to the railway!

The railway's behind those trees there.

It is a beautiful little island, James, it really is.

It is.

I hope it's many years before you have your final rest here,

-but it is a lovely place to end up.

-Thank you very much.

Two adjacent rivers stand between me

and my final destination of Loch Tay.

The Dochart is crossed by the grand stone viaduct

that overlooks the resting place of so many MacNabs.

Then there's the River Lochay...

..where I step off the railway for the final time.

The bank of the river leads you to the most complete view down the entire length of Loch Tay.

Well, it's taken quite a lot of effort to get here,

but there it is finally, Loch Tay,

stretching out in front of me.

This is the view the Victorians would have flocked to see,

packed into railway carriages.

They would have disembarked from the train over there,

only yards from a pier that no longer exists,

and then they would have stepped on board

a steamer that no longer exists.

For visitors back then the gateway to the Highlands was no longer a place to fear.

Scott and Wordsworth had piqued their interest,

and then the railway finally convinced them

that this was no longer a place of tribal clan violence.

When you look up into the mountains today,

you can still feel and imagine those scenes,

and even Dr Beeching can't change that.

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