Cultybraggan and Ardoch – Wartime Huts and a Roman Fort
A few hours.
The route
On the quiet road between Comrie and Braco, soldiers have made camp eighteen centuries apart.
At Cultybraggan, long rows of curved Nissen huts still line the lanes of a Second World War prisoner of war camp, and at Ardoch the grassy ramparts of a Roman fort ripple across a field. Lunch is by an open fire in an old coaching inn in Muthill.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
The nearest of ours is Whitehill Farm House in Auchterarder, 3 miles away. Sleeps 8; next free Sat 24 Oct to Wed 28 Oct.
The day
Strathearn
A morning among wartime huts and Roman ditches in the green country south of Comrie, with a long lunch by the fire to finish.
About three and a half hoursAbout 1.5 miles on foot
Cultybraggan Camp
An attraction
Cultybraggan Camp is on the B827 just south of Comrie, and it's now open to the public to walk round. It was built in 1941 and became Camp 21, a prisoner of war camp that held Italian and then German prisoners until 1948. The army kept it for training until 2004, and in 2007 the people of Comrie bought it together. It's one of the best preserved camps of its kind in Britain. Nearly all of its Nissen huts still stand in long rows of curved, rust-red iron along the camp's roads, with the old administration block and a tall brick tower among them, and today the huts are put to new uses. Allow about an hour to wander.
14 min by car
Ardoch Roman Fort
It's 14 minutes' drive south to Braco. Park in Braco village, as the estate's sign asks, and walk a few minutes north up the A822 to the gate, on the east side of the road. The Romans built a fort here late in the first century and came back to build a smaller one in the middle of the second. No buildings stand now, but its ramparts and ditches do, grassed over, and on the north side they run eight or nine lines deep. A landowner fenced them off from the plough in the late 1700s, which is why so much survives, and it's often called the best preserved Roman fort in Scotland. The land is private, and the estate lets visitors walk it at reasonable times. Allow about three-quarters of an hour.
9 min by car
Coorie Inn
Lunch
It's 9 minutes' drive north up the A822 to the Coorie Inn on Willoughby Street in Muthill, an 18th-century coaching inn with open fires in its bar and lounge and two AA rosettes for its cooking. Tables can be booked online. Park through the archway at the back, where there's level entry into the restaurant. Dogs on a lead are welcome, though not in the restaurant itself.
If it rains
The camp and the fort are both out in the open, on tarmac lanes and grass banks. In heavy rain, keep the fort short and go on to lunch by the fire at the Coorie Inn.
Where to stay
Photographs by Menhir JP and Coorie Inn Restaurant & Rooms, Crieff via Google