Kirriemuir

Why base here

Kirriemuir is a town of 6,012 people at the foot of the Angus glens, by the 2022 figure Wikipedia gives, and Wikipedia says the museum in the Town House holds some of the Kirriemuir Sculptured Stones. J. M. Barrie was born here in 1860, the National Trust for Scotland now runs his birthplace as a museum, and Wikipedia records that the town’s camera obscura was Barrie’s gift. The hillwalking case is simpler: the glens begin here, and the town has the bus to Dundee that the glens do not.

It is not the closest bed to the hill, though. Glen Doll is 18 miles up the valley, and Visit Cairngorms places Glen Clova inside the Cairngorms National Park, with a hotel and lodges in the glen. Anyone who wants an early start on Driesh and Mayar saves the drive by sleeping in the glen. Kirriemuir suits a trip that mixes one hill day with a town, a museum and a way home by bus.

On foot versus by car

Nothing this site lists starts in Kirriemuir itself. Driesh and Mayar begins at the Glen Doll car park, which Forestry and Land Scotland reaches by the B955 north to the head of Glen Clova and then a minor road. Google Maps’ driving directions give 18.3 miles and 39 minutes from the town. Walkhighlands lists no public transport to the start; Forestry and Land Scotland describes a limited postbus from Kirriemuir to Clova village, and the nearest toilets and food it names are in Clova village, not at the car park.

The day is 14.5km with 835m of ascent on this site’s figures, with a pathless stretch of plateau between the two summits where Walkhighlands points walkers to a line of fence posts. For something shorter from the same car park, Walkhighlands gives the Corrie Fee walk as 7.5km with 203m of ascent in two to two and a half hours, on a path that climbs gently to a viewpoint at the foot of the corrie, a National Nature Reserve; the steeper extension to the waterfall is optional.

Lochnagar is the next big mountain on this site, across the hills to the north-west, but the glen road ends at Glen Doll and the one up Glen Muick ends at the Spittal, so the two are a long drive apart. It is covered under Braemar.

Practicalities

Kirriemuir station closed to passengers on 4 August 1952, according to Wikipedia. The route planner puts Dundee 17.5 miles away by the shorter road and 19.3 by the A90, and Stagecoach’s timetable for route 20 runs Dundee, Forfar, Kirriemuir.

Barrie’s birthplace is on the Brechin road, Wikipedia says. Forestry and Land Scotland allows overnight parking at Glen Doll for mountain access, and says no camping or sleeping in vehicles.