Wednesday Walk - Around Dollar Glen and up to Castle Campbell

On Sunday afternoon my wife, daughter and I took a trip to Dollar Glen, which is around a 45 mins drive from our house. It was our first time visiting, knowing that its meant to have lovely walks there. Glen is a word for valley (in the Scottish version of English).

It was quite a nice day here on sunday - lovely blue skies, fairly warm and the autumn colours were in full bloom.

On getting there we found that you could do a circular walk around a steep sided gorge, with a castle at the top. We hadnt realised that there was a castle there - so that was the bonus to this walk !

The path snaked up around the side of the Gorge, and one of the first features we found was this old part that jutted out over the stream that ran through the gorge to give views of the stream on both sides.

From there we made our way down towards the bottom of the circular path and the gorge. We passed the odd old building above. It was bricked up so we could not see what it was. It was about 20 foot long but only about 4-5 foot high - so rather strange.

At the bottom of the gorge this bridge took us over the stream so that we could start climbing up the other side towards the castle.

The walk up to the castle was really steep, and took quite a bit longer than we thought. We had to stop fairly regularly to catch our breath, and this was one of the odd things we saw when we stopped. A tree stump carved like a mushroom with all these coins hammered into it. It looks cool I guess.

We started to get views up to the small hill at the side when we were nearing the top of the gorge. I could see people walking up the side of the hill, but we were so knackered from climbing up the path, that there was no way that we were also going to go up there !

It was getting late in the afternoon by the time we reached the top and some sunset colours were beginning to appear in the sky to the side of the hill.

At the top we came to Castle Campbell. It does not look like much, but thats due to its position. Its on a small spit of land that juts out over into the gorge, and as such only has one side that needed to be heavily defensive - which is what you see above. I have to say in terms of locations, that its one of the best I've ever seen for a castle from defensive perspectives - it would have been a nightmare to attack, although on the other hand - there would have been pretty much no where for the defenders to go, apart from over the cliff side if they were loosing a siege.

Unfortunately the castle was closed - only taking visitors in the summer months. But it looked really cool - the other side we couldnt see is the pretty part, with a couple of staggered gardens and the remains of a now ruined great hall, that look pretty cool from a distance.

As we started to descend back down the side of the gorge to the car park we were given the glimpse of the castle above. We enjoyed the walk that much that we agreed we'd come back next year when the castle was open so that we could also visit it.

It was a lovely walk, taking around an hour in total, with the climb up the side of the gorge giving us all some great exercise. A walk we we definitely be back to do again !