Issue 42

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We’re delighted to be back with a new ‘Hidden Scotland Weekly’. We really hope that you enjoy reading.

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Have a great Sunday!

Discovering the Nooks and Crannies of Fife

History hangs like a sea mist over this green, salty-aired slab of land between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay. The so-called Kingdom of Fife – often known simply as ‘The Kingdom’ – spent around half a millennium as the home patch of the Scottish monarchy, and the peninsula still has a unique character. A place of mellow fi shing villages and rolling farmland, of age-old abbeys and booming coastal views, the region is also famed worldwide as the home of golf. Mark Twain, who memorably described the sport as a ‘good walk spoiled’, clearly never visited Fife.

Read more within issue 08, find out more here.

The Creature Living In The Birks of Aberfeldy

Made famous by Robert Burns, the Birks of Aberfeldy is a place of inspiration, full of soaring trees and tumbling waterfalls. This small gorge on the outskirts of town was originally known as the Den of Moness after the river that flows down its rocky sides. Only after Burns sat on a rock and wrote about the beauty of the birch trees known as “birks” did the new name stick.

However, Aberfeldy itself is said to have gained its name a long time ago, after a strange little creature. Local tradition claims that Aberfeldy comes from the Gaelic - Obair Pheallaidh or "The Work of Peallaidh. This Peallaidh was a shaggy beast from Scottish folklore called a Urisk and he had created this beautiful collection of waterfalls to be his home.

Urisks can live for a very long time, so Peallaidh was still lurking amongst the Birks of Aberfeldy after humans had moved into the area. He wasn't an aggressive or threatening beast, but he did have a habit of leaving his watery lair to play tricks on the locals. While not intentionally hurting anyone, there was every chance he would make life difficult, so you didn’t want him prowling around your home.

A housewife was making bannocks one day when she spied that shaggy little Urisk sneak through the door and snatch up her entire first batch of baking from where it was cooling on the table. Without a care in the world, he sat munching away in the corner, dropping crumbs all over her clean floor.

The baker wasn't happy, but it’s rarely a good idea to risk offending a supernatural creature so she continued to bake. Every time the Urisk finished eating one batch, he would grab the next cooled plate of bannocks and begin to devour them. Peallaidh’s unhappy host was praying that he would eventually get full and leave of his own accord, but he showed no sign of slowing down and she was almost completely out of flour!

Worried that her family would starve if this didn’t stop, the housewife saw only one option. She took a little longer with the next batch, waiting until the Urisk was finished the last. Then she spun around with a fresh bannock, still roasting hot from the fire and dropped it straight into his outstretched hand.

The scolded Urisk screamed in pain and sprinted through the door to plunge himself in the icy cool waters by the Birks of Aberfeldy. While the baker was pleased she'd gotten rid of her pest, she felt awful about hurting him. Up in his waterfall lair, Peallaidh was feeling equally guilty about almost starving the woman and her family with his actions.

The next day, the Urisk found a peace offering in the form of a glass of milk and a freshly baked bannock waiting on a rock near his home. Soon, the woman's husband found that a large, dry patch of his field, that had always been barren, had suddenly become moist and fertile.

Both Urisk and baker had made amends.

Words by Graeme Johncock Photograph by Simon Hird

Glasgow

Glasgow might not be Scotland’s capital, but as the country’s largest city – and a proud, creative, indefatigable metropolis – it’s well accustomed to the spotlight. The nearly 1.7 million people who live here play their part in creating a unique brew of earthiness, elegance, edginess and effervescence. 

The city’s attention-grabbing architecture, which blends old sandstone terraces and spire-laden museums with sleeker riverside buildings and more utilitarian districts, serves as an apt reflection of its many faces. Glasgow, in a sense, is exactly what you make it, and this fact has seen it become a genuinely rewarding visitor destination, with a fast-evolving food scene, some world-class cultural attractions, and a post-industrial, forward-facing character which bubbles through the city at all hours. The nightlife, indeed, deserves a chapter of its own.   

Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Celtic and Rangers. The River Clyde. Whatever your associations with the Dear Green Place (a nickname which still holds, thanks to the presence of more than 90 parks and gardens), it’s somewhere well deserving of a stay. The tastemakers at Conde Nast Traveller even placed Glasgow at the top of their list of post-pandemic UK city breaks, lauding everything from its street art to its West End restaurants.

And unsurprisingly for a city famed for its designers and innovators, it’s also become a prime shopping destination, with some excellent independent stores and boutiques among the more familiar names. Today’s Glasgow is more readily described as trendy than touristy – especially when compared to its age-old rival Edinburgh – but the reasons to come calling are copious.

Here are 5 things to do in the city

Glasgow Mural Trail

Bringing colour, creativity and vitality to central Glasgow, this walking trail celebrates some of the city’s superb public street art. The oldest piece dates back to 2008, and the trail today takes in some 30 artworks – many of them vast, and ranging from radical statements to surrealist tableaux.

Riverside Museum

Sitting close to where the River Clyde meets the River Kelvin, this unashamedly modern cultural attraction was designed by the late Dame Zaha Hadid and opened in 2011. Behind its already iconic façade, the collections themselves focus on the city’s role as a transport and technology powerhouse, with ample space given to Glasgow’s shipbuilding heritage.

Hunterian Museum

As Scotland’s oldest public museum, drawing in wide-eyed visitors since way back in 1807, the Hunterian occupies a special place in Glasgow’s cultural pantheon. It’s essentially a university collection – one of the finest on the planet – but you don’t need to be an undergraduate to enjoy the superb array of historical, scientific and ethnographic exhibits on show.

Glasgow Botanic Gardens

Part of the city’s tapestry for more than 200 years, Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens house more than 9,000 different plants, many of them growing under the cover of the gargantuan curvilinear glasshouse that is the Kibble Palace. Away from the glasshouses, more than 20 hectares of landscaped grounds stretch along the banks of the River Kelvin.

The Barras Market

That’s “barras” as in “barrows”. This sprawling street and indoor market has been a Glasgow institution since the early part of the 20th century, and still has a reputation as somewhere to find a weekend bargain near the heart of the city. Expect everything from antiques and bric a brac to cut-price clothes and street food trucks.

Some History?

History

Archaeological evidence suggests that our prehistoric forebears were familiar with the lands now occupied by Glasgow. However, the city’s story begins in earnest with St Kentigern, better known as St Mungo, a sixth-century Christian missionary renowned for his energetic preaching style. Sometime around the year 543, he built a simple church on the banks of the Clyde (Glasgow Cathedral now stands on the same site).

From these humble religious beginnings, the settlement grew incrementally over the next few centuries. In around 1285 the first bridge was built across the Clyde, and 1451 saw the founding of the University of Glasgow. As the local population grew, the burgeoning city became not just an academic and ecclesiastical hub but a key base for industry, international trade, and shipbuilding.

Buoyed by demand for everything from coal to cotton, Glasgow became one of the richest cities in Europe, its population outstripping that of Edinburgh by 1821. It played a vital shipbuilding role in the World Wars, but by the 1960s its yards and wharves were in steady decline. These fortunes were reversed when Glasgow was named European City of Culture in 1990, helping to transform some of its run-down areas, and a further boon came in 2014, when it hosted the Commonwealth Games. The arrival of COP26 in 2021 cemented its status as a global city.  

Some interesting facts

• If the day’s a damp one, give thanks to Charles Macintosh (not to be confused with Charles Rennie Mackintosh), the Glasgow inventor who, in 1823, came up with the idea of sandwiching a rubber material between two pieces of fabric, thus creating the rain mac.  

• Victorian scientist William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, taught at Glasgow University for some 53 years. His wider contributions to science, theory and learning are still seen as phenomenal, and the Kelvin Scale temperature system is named in his honour.    

• Fingers in your ears. Glaswegian inventors have been responsible for all manner of now familiar items, but few have made such an impact - aurally, at least - as the foghorn, the 1850s brainchild of Glasgow-born Robert Foulis. 

• Elvis Presley might be an instantly recognisable figure among Brits, but he only once set foot in the UK - on a two-hour stop-off at Glasgow Prestwick Airport while returning from military service in Germany. The airport still has a dedicated Elvis bar. 

The Old Man of Storr - Taken by Simon Hird

The Best of Edinburgh: A Hidden Scotland Guide

Our first ever guidebook is still available from our online shop here, and also some shops including, Toppings and co, Waterstones, WHSmith, Lifestory, Tartan Blanket Co, The Blue Magpie, Typewronger Books, Meander, Royal Botanic Gardens, Beech & Birch and from our shop at Milton of Crathes in Banchory.