Glenshee
Glenshee Café & Gift Shop
Introduction
Glenshee Café & Gift Shop sits on the A93, on the long run between Blairgowrie and the Spittal of Glenshee. It used to be called The Lair, and it's under new owners now, open ten till four, seven days a week.
It does a few jobs at once. There's the café, with homemade soup, toasties, cakes and Glen Lyon coffee, an Aga and a wood burner going in winter. There's a gift shop with local crafts and souvenirs. And a farm shop selling eggs, bread, fruit and frozen local meat. If you're planning where to head next, they keep maps and local tips behind the counter.
It's a roadside stop rather than a destination in itself. But it's a good one, and on a long drive through the glen there isn't much else until you're over the top.
Location
The café sits on the A93 in Glenshee, in Perthshire, on the run between Blairgowrie and the Spittal of Glenshee. A roadside stop in the lower part of the glen, below the climb to the Cairnwell, with parking outside. Easy to find on the main road north towards Braemar and Deeside.
What's nearby
Plenty strung along the glen from here, mostly north up the A93. Just up the road is the Cockstane, the gathering stone of Clan MacThomas, a quick leg-stretch with a car park and an old tale behind it. Then the Spittal of Glenshee, an inn site since medieval times where the Shee Water forms, and a stop on the Cateran Trail.
Keep climbing and you reach the Devil's Elbow, the old double hairpin bypassed in 1971 but still walkable. Past that, the summit of the pass at 670 metres, the highest main road in Britain, and the Glenshee Ski Centre. The Cairnwell Chairlift runs there through the summer, seven minutes up to near the top of the Cairnwell, one of the more accessible Munros in Scotland.
North over the top it's about nine miles down to Braemar, with its castle, the Fife Arms and the Highland Gathering every September.
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