Level walks in Callander & the Trossachs

Lower Crags walk
easy walking - length of your choice.

Description:

Length: about 1-2 mile depending on route taken
Start:   Bracklinn Road Car Park
Woodland paths

This walk takes you into the woods behind Callander. Walking is fairly easy but not suitable for anyone who cannot manage one or two slopes.

The walk starts at the small carpark at the top of North Church St, east of the town centre.

Take the path  leading uphill from the entrance to the car park. This leads to Ancaster road where you turn right and follow about 400 yd to the junction with Braeleny road. Turn left here and follow past Arden House - once the home of 'Doctor Finlay's Casebook' TV series,  to the top of the slope at the golf course entrance where you turn left then right into the woodland road up the hill. Some way up on the left is a car-park where you enter the woodlands proper.

As you walk towards the woods through the car park a narrow track branches off to the left.
Take this track and follow it. The track meanders through the woodlands and passes many outcropping examples of 'Callander Pudding stone' - the conglomerate rock composed of pebbles and sand from which much of old Callander is built. The rock was formed by the compression, then raising up, of an ancient pebbly beach.

Your nose will detect a certain dampness in the air. This moist atmosphere is conducive to the many plant species to be found here - especially the mosses and fungii - don't be tempted by the 'mushrooms' unless you are an expert as many of these attractive looking fungii are poisonous.

From this track, occasional smaller tracks lead off to the left and by following any of them you will re-enter the town at some point.

If you stay on the main track for its duration, you will eventually descend to a point behind some modern flats where the track suddenly rises; this is the place to make your exit as the rising track leads to the Crags walk described on another page.

Walk down to the right of the flats to 'Tulipen Crescent' where you turn left then right to walk through the car park at the rear of the Dreadnought Hotel. At the far end of the car park, take the marked exit from the car park and turn left to cross the old railway bridge. The car park is on the site of the old Callander railway station which brought the early tourists to Callander.

Over the bridge now, follow Ancaster Road to finish the walk at the point where you originally came up from the start at North Church St.