CALLANDER, ABERFOYLE AND PORT OF MENTEITH
TEN FACTS ABOUT CALLANDER, ABERFOYLE AND PORT OF MENTEITH
In the 1770s, Callander became Scotland’s first planned rural town.
Early visitors to the town included poets William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott.
The railway arrived in Callander in 1858, bringing with it a rush of visitors.
Local banker Donald McLaren’s trust funded the construction of the McLaren High School in 1892.
Rob Roy MacGregor, a folk hero who fought during the 1715 Jacobite Rising, is buried at Balquhidder kirkyard.
Inchmahome Priory, on an island in Lake of Menteith, was founded in 1238 by the Earl of Menteith.
In 1859, Loch Katrine was enlarged to become the first reliable source of piped clean water for people in Glasgow.
Callander’s annual jazz and blues festival regularly attracts star performers, with this year’s events taking place on 3-5 October.
The Duke’s Pass on the A821 is a popular road with many motorcyclists but is often closed during the winter by heavy snow.
The chambered cairn at Auchenlaich is the longest known Neolithic burial site in Scotland, measuring
W
hen Sir Walter Scott published The Lady Of The Lake in 1810, his poem put Callander and the Trossachs on
the map as the world’s first tourist destination. Later that century, the coming of the railway to Callander cemented the town’s reputation with visitors, with Queen Victoria even initially favouring nearby Invertrossachs House as her Scottish residence, before opting for Balmoral. In a roundabout way, it was the coming of the
railway that also triggered my family’s associa- tion with the town. My father had been finance director at Lochcarron mill in the Borders but moved our family to Callander in 1967 when he took over William Glen & Sons, a drapery business that had opened in the town in 1869 to cater for the influx of tourists. My father built up the business and, when he
fell ill as I was leaving school, I juggled univer- sity and work to join the family firm. Eventually I guided William Glen through its takeover of Highland dress business Hector Russell and set up The Whisky Shop chain. Though both those businesses have now
been sold on, William Glen has retained stores selling Scottish goods in Toronto in Canada and San Francisco in the United States, and I still run the company’s global headquarters from Callander. The town is my home and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Part of the attraction is the sense of commu-
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