Fairy Knowe, Doon Hill and Lochan Spling
Date: 11 March 2023
Leader: Bernadette
Grade: C
Number on walk: 18
Length 15 km. Ascent 270 m.
Hills climbed: None.
Start by crossing the River Forth and pass Kirkton enroute to Lochan Spling via forest tracks. After Lochan Spling continue along forest paths over Fairy Knowe to Doon Hill. Visit the Faerie Tree and return to Aberfoyle via the 17th century burial ground at the old parish church.
Click here for GPX track of the walk
Our group at the start of the walk in Aberfoyle car park
Looking west along Lochan Spling with a metal sculpture representing a pike prominent in the foreground
This sculpture was commissioned by the forestry commission in 2008 from the artist Rob Mulholland and is designed to “create representations of animals and birds as part of the natural food chain in the forest”.
Our path took us alongside Lochan Spling
We had our first tea break on the shore of Lochan Spling where there was a very convenient picnic table
This was the site of another of Rob Mulholland's sculptures – This time representing a dragonfly
Our group on the path at Fairy Knowe
One of the sculptures on Doon Hill
The fairy tree on Doon Hill
Legend has it that the tree, a pine, is both a doorway to an underground Fairy Queen’s palace and where the Reverend Robert Kirk’s spirit was trapped. Reverend Kirk was interested in local folklore and superstitions and in 1691 wrote a famous book telling the secrets of the fairies. The fairies, fed up with Rev Kirk's revelations about them, kidnapped him and encased his soul in the pine tree on top of the hill. The canny fairies put a changeling in his place, thereby allowing people to believe the Reverend had died of a heart attack on the hill and allowing his burial in 1692.
Our group at the foot of the fairy tree before returning to Aberfoyle
Not only was the tree thought to be the last resting place of Rev.Robert Kirk it was /is a clootie tree. Many visitors hang clouties (rags) in the hope that as the cloutie rots the illness affecting the person on whose behalf the cloutie was placed would also vanish.