Falls of Acharn and Loch Tay Crannog
The area around Kenmore
The Crannog Centre
Getting to the Falls of Acharn
Walking up to the Falls
Continuing up the glen
The route down
The South Side of Loch Tay may not have access to summits comparable to the Ben Lawers and Tarmachan ranges on the north side, but it does have some unusual attractions that are well worth a visit. If you have a half day to spare at the start or end of a holiday, or after being stuck inside on a wet mornng, you can still enjoy a couple of memorable experiences without too much time and effort.
We went there in the summer after a midday picnic and wander around Dunkeld, and reeturned one afternoon at the end of the year before checking in for a night's stay at the Fortingall Hotel. Fortingall is the other side of Drummond Hill from Kenmore, at the mouth of Glen Lyon, and the fully refurbished hotel makes a fine place to get away from it all, and as a centre for exploring the area. To find out more about the hotel, go to the hotel website.
Kenmore itself is 6 miles down the road from Aberfeldy, at the foot of Loch Tay. The long-established Kenmore Hotel commands the village square, and carries reminders of Robert Burns' stay there. We stopped there on our second visit and enjoyed lunch in the dining room overlooking the River Tay.
Croft-na-Caber is a watersports centre just beyond the road junction, a short distance along the South Loch Tay Road, adjacent to the Crannog Centre. This is where we started our first visit, parking in the car park across the road from Crof-na-Caber and having afternoon tea beside the Loch, before going to visit to the Crannog Centre.
Established in the 1990s by the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology, the Crannog Centre combines informative displays in a modern visitor centre with outdoor (but undercover) demonstrations of iron age technology where visitors can have a go themselves at creating fire or carving a piece of wood. Ducks hop around looking for scraps.
The highlight is the reconstructed crannog - an iron-age dwelling built on wooden poles sunk into the floor of the loch just offshore. Visitors are led across a wooden bridge linking the visitor centre with the crannog, and through the doorway. It's surprisingly spacious inside, with a hearth in the centre (seems a bit of a risk in such a combustible environment) and living spaces spread around it. It's all made up to show how a family could have lived and slept in here, along with some of their livestock to help keep the place warm.
Well worth a visit - the kids will love it, but so will grown-ups!
There's a separate Gallery of photos from the visit to the Crannog.
Getting to the Falls of Acharn
After visiting the crannog with the family and a friend, I had some time to spare before driving back to Dundee, and decided on a quick run along to the Falls of Acharn. It's just over a mile along the South Loch Tay road from the Crannog, so you could easily walk it. However, there is parking space in the little village of Acharn, just across the bridge. This is where we parked on the second visit just after Christmas.
Either way, just after leaving Croft-na-Caber look out for the signs indicating that there are red squirrels about, and take care! Halfway to Acharn there's a fish farm beside the loch shore on the right.
Acharn itself is a neat village, with hanging baskets in the summer, and a beautifully conserved millhouse next to the bridge. Pity about the wheelie bins, but they do serve an important purpose.
It's a circular route of about a mile and a half - up one side of the gorge, and down the other. You can go either way round. It's a gentler climb to go up the vehicle track on the west side, signposted from the parking spaces just across the bridge. That's the way we went in December, on a cool misty afternoon.
We were with a couple of friends, and wrapped up well against the cold (although it wasn't bad considering the time of year, with just a thin covering of snow on the higher tops).
It's a steady climb up a wide, unsurfaced vehicle track, with pastures to the right and woodland on the left. You don't really get much impression of the gorge developing just beyond the grassy wooded bank. It's important to keep an eye open for the little path leading to the left, with a sign pointing to the "Hermit's Cave". A tunnel has been built into the bank, and it's pretty dark inside! I'd been there before, but it was a bit disconcerting for the other three - "where are you taking us now, I can't see a thing!"
However after a short distance there's a grey light to the left, and a side-passage appears. A few more steps along here and you emerge onto a wide platform, and it really is like emerging into another world.
Across the deep gorge, a high waterfall cascades down through the trees. When I visited in the summer, a Dutch couple and their child were already there, and the woman remarked that now they didn't have to travel to South America to see the waterfalls! OK it's not quite the Angel Falls, but it's surprisingly impressive for such a discrete location, and the tunnel provides a theatrical way of approaching it. The metal railing makes it quite safe.
Returning into the tunnel, we turned left towards the upper exit. The wide track continued upwards. There are two options for crossing over to the other bank. The main track goes on up and around over a stone bridge, linking with the top of a path which leads down the other side. Or there's a wooden bridge just before that, reached by a diversion signposted off to the left through young birch trees.
It's worth doing both - take the turning to the left, through the trees, and it takes you to a narrow rocky section of the upper gorge, with a viewing platform to see the cascades and the rocks hollowed out by the action of the water. This leads on to the solid wooden bridge below, but we returned to the main track to cross over the upper bridge.
From this point at the top of the route it appears from the map that there's an alternative route across the open hillside, back down to Kenmore. Worth exploring one day.
The normal route is to continue through a gate and down the eastern bank of the gorge, now on a path rather than a track. There are a few steps to negotiate and a low-hanging branch to bend under, but it's pretty straightforward. At a couple of points, there are views across the gorge to the left, but it's not possible to get a good view of the falls from this side.
The way down is through mature woodland, with a bench providing a resting spot under beech trees just before the steepest section. The mist was just breaking up a little as we descended, giving us views over the stone wall on the right to the hills beyond Strathtay.
Then it's an easier walk once again, and if you're chatting in company you scarcely notice the climb up and back down again. It would be fun for children too, giving them a "real" walk through the woods and something dramatic to see, without too much effort to complain about!
Separate gallery of photos from the Crannog>
Go to the Loch Tay regional page for other walks in the area>
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