Exploring (Virtually) OS Landranger Sheet 53 : Blairgowrie and Rattray, Forest of Alyth
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| River Tay, through Perth (October 2018) |
Moving just a few miles southwest from the previous sheet bring us to Blairgowrie - although the sheet might be better named as 'Perth to Pitlochry' (the first being on the southern edge and the other on the northern edge) - and while its mostly an inland sheet, it does just manage to include a wee bit of the Firth of Tay.
The sheet does have a few contour-dominated areas - the Forest of Alyth, Forest of Clunie and Glen Shee, but the initial impression when you unfold the sheet is of a 'developed' area. There are lots of towns and villages and lots of roads - including the M90, A9, A90 and A93 - and the main railway lines from Perth up to Inverness and to Aberdeen.
I'm driven (and trained) across this sheet many times, Perth has been a regular stopping point both heading north and south, as has Pitlochry when heading up to Aviemore or Inverness. As I've been writing this I've been distracted by thinking about how many times I might have driven up (or down) the A9 or the A90 - I think further research is going to be needed.
As with so many of the 'transit' sheets - ones I've driven across rather than 'visited', I'm left with a long list of places I ought to visit (or revisit) properly rather than just use them as service areas.
Of course the key to properly exploring an area is to find somewhere to park the car and to start exploring at 3 or 4 miles per hour, rather than 50 or 60 miles per hour. Like so many of the sheets in this part of Scotland, there's a trail to follow - in this case the Cataran Trail, which starts and finishes in Blairgowrie and goes along Strathardle (then heads off onto Sheet 43) before appearing down Glen Isla and meandering through Alyth and back to Bridge of Cally. I've just added this to my walks list!
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