St Fillans

Why base here

St Fillans sits at the east end of Loch Earn, where the River Earn leaves the loch, 5 miles west of Comrie on the A85, Wikipedia says, and the park authority describes it as a conservation village on the eastern boundary of Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park; it designated the conservation area in October 2011. It was a clachan called Port of Lochearn until 1817, when Lord Gwydyr renamed it after the saint, and the railway from Comrie, which reached it on 1 October 1901, made it a lochside resort, which is why the grand gable-fronted houses on the main road date from then. The community’s place plan gives 259 people at the 2011 census. East of the village is Dundurn, the knoll that Canmore presumes was the fort the Annals of Ulster record under siege in 683, and excavation in the 1970s confirmed it was occupied in the 7th century.

The case for sleeping here is the south shore of the loch. Ben Vorlich starts at Ardvorlich, along the minor road from the east end of the village. Comrie, back along the A85, has the longer list of walks, from the Deil’s Cauldron to Ben Chonzie; St Fillans is the base for a week built round Ben Vorlich and the loch.

On foot versus by car

Two walks start in the village. Walkhighlands’ Loch Earn viewpoint walk leaves the layby at the west end: 6.75km and 300m of ascent in one and a half to two and a half hours on good tracks, zig-zagging up the hillside to the fenced surge shaft, where water piped from the Glen Lednock reservoir drops into the underground power station, and a picnic bench looking along the whole loch. Dundurn, St Fillans Hill, is 4.7km and 110m from the parking area opposite the village shop by Walkhighlands’ figures: easy lanes past the golf course, where it asks walkers to give way to golfers driving across the track, then an extremely boggy field and a steep, rugged climb on a very faint path to the rock called St Fillan’s Seat. Walkhighlands says nothing of the fort is visible, and that the best way down is the way you came.

Ben Vorlich needs a car or a walk along the south Loch Earn road. Walkhighlands gives the round with Stùc a’ Chròin as 14.5km and 1,145m of ascent in six to seven hours, with rough informal verge parking near the hump-backed bridge at Ardvorlich and no public transport to the start. Meall na Fearna, a Corbett east of it, starts from the same verges: 12.25km and 730m, the last of it on very boggy, pathless ground. Ardvorlich Estate’s entry in Heading for the Scottish Hills gives stalking from mid-September to 20 October, and says the main paths and ridges on Ben Vorlich are always OK.

Practicalities

There is no railway: Wikipedia records that the line through St Fillans closed on 1 October 1951. Stagecoach’s route 15 runs from Perth through Crieff and Comrie to the village, and Perth is the place for trains. Perth and Kinross Council lists no car park in St Fillans, and the community’s place plan calls parking in the season a very big problem; Walkhighlands points walkers to the area opposite the shop and another near the Four Seasons Hotel. Loch Earn Sailing Club, on the north shore near the village, says it is members only and cannot hire boats or train non-members outside a few events.

With children

The viewpoint walk passes the village play park on the way down, Walkhighlands notes. The village’s own Circle the Village walk is 3km and graded easy, though the community’s sheet says it uses a rocky, narrow path with gates and the pavement of the A85. The loch is the thing to watch: the Loch Earn code warns that its attractive beaches shelve very quickly into deep, cold water. Dundurn, with its boggy field and steep crags, is not a child’s walk.