Inching towards Perth: 10th May 2014

Perth is somewhere I'd been to a lot whilst growing up in Dundee but not that often since I'd been drinking (good) beer. Today gave me the chance to visit a few old haunts, take in the Perth Beer Festival on the green expanses of the North Inch Park and hopefully find an interestingly coloured beer.


View Perth Beer Festival in a larger map

Outward travel was as follows :-
  Train: Glasgow Queen St to Perth (41 on the hour & others)

I got into Perth station fairly early in the morning on a bit of a mizzly day and set off east towards the River Tay. As I crossed the main road bridge over the river I was able to see the railway/pedestrian bridge over to Moncreiffe Island in the middle of the Tay and since it was high tide, the causeway to island (in the channel on the left) was completely overrun by the flow of the Tay.

I passed the large Isle of Skye Hotel on the other side of the bridge and headed up some really quite steep, narrow roads until the main road up to Kinnoull Hill. There are some pretty impressive houses up here and (somewhat more surprisingly) a full-blown Monastery, St Mary's Monastery and Spirituality Centre - the B-listed monastic buildings were a bit obscured by trees & flowering bushes today but it seemed a busy place with lots of cars in the car park.

Just before the road turns left there is a small car park and the start of a number of paths for Kinnoull Hill Woodland Park.

There's a fairly easy zig-zag, 'level-ish' path up the hill, but there's also a steeper, muddier, but more direct one, so (of course) I chose that and started to clamber up the slopes of the hill. It probably only took 20 minutes or so of effort and then the path opened out onto a viewpoint at the very top of the hill. The cliffs here are almost sheer (with no safety protection at all) but they really do give some great views of the River Tay as flows through the Carse of Gowrie to Dundee and of the Friarton Bridge as it crosses the Tay connecting the fields & hills of Fife.

On the other side of the hill there's another viewpoint towards the northern part of Perth and the southern Highlands in the distance (sadly not really visible today) and then slightly further on I was able to see a tower perched on the next part of the hilltop.

It was only another few minutes to walk to this - a romantic folly built in 1829 to try to make the area look at bit more like the Rhine Gorge Valley of Germany, but today it's crumbling away with the narrow main tower just about the only part of the structure still in one piece.

Thankfully going down the hill is a lot easier than going up (well, except on the knees the next day) and I took the same way down rather than attempt to find a more direct path to the main road. This meant I had to follow the main road out of Perth to Dundee for a bit until a signpost for Moncrieff Island. After leading me down to the bank of the Tay this then followed the railway line until Moncreiffe Island. As mentioned before there is a causeway here to allow access at low tide, but the people who have allotments or the golfers for the King James VI Golf Course on the island mostly bring everything they need by foot. And that footpath really is close to the railway line (no trains for me to wave at today, damn).

Next I needed to find some lunch and some beer and so headed towards the west side of Perth by taking the diagonal route through South Inch Park. This took me to the Craigie Burn and a couple of arches under the main railway line.

I followed the burn for a bit until I could hear the sound of cascading water from around the corner. And there in the middle of a housing estate was a fairly impressive waterfall - almost literally in someone's back garden. I can only assume that you get used to the noise over a period of time.

Rejoining the burn at the top of the hill I next managed to find a cycle path which bypassed a lot of the side-streets of Perth and dropped me off almost in the back garden of the Cherrybank Inn, a large pub on the road out towards Glasgow. There was certainly a lot of cherry blossom here from a number of trees in full bloom, hence (I guess) the name of the pub.

I went up the steps to the middle level of the building, entered the large lounge and then made my way through some swinging doors into the main bar. In amongst the 5 hand-pulls with beer from local Scottish breweries I found the pump-clip for the special beer that had been created by Inveralmond Brewery for St Johnstone Football Club who were playing in the Scottish Cup Final the next weekend. Called Saints 130 Ale (since this was the first time in 130 years of existence that they had ever reached a Cup Final) when it was poured by the smiling owner/barman it really came out a luminous light blue, almost verging on cyan. I can remember drinking green beers before but I think a blue beer is a definite first for me.

They had had a big press & TV launch for the beer at the Cherrybank during the week with striker Stevie May from St Johnstone (a friend of the owner's son) in attendance (he didn't partake of any beer at all, at least before the game). I assume it's been made with some blueberry syrup and it definitely had that blueberry muffin sweet taste with a decent, fairly bitter citrus finish, a really nice beer. This is Inveralmond head brewer Ken Duncan (in full mad eccentric scientist mode) creating the beer.

(Pic from the Inveralmond Brewery Facebook pages)

I took my blue beer back into the rear section of the lounge and grabbed a menu to peruse. The lounge is sort of split in two - a large dining room cum conservatory with lots of comfy chairs & tables, high windows and views over some allotments & the nearby golf course and then it's semi-partitioned off with more tables & chairs at the rear in front of the long lounge bar-top which extends into the main bar.

I ordered some food - there's an extensive, good value menu with lots of specials, but the soup & sandwich deal with a choice of filling (egg mayo for me) was only £5 and these must have came after only about ~5 minutes. I think the colour scheme for lunch today worked really well!

Since it was clearing up I decided to walk all the way back into the centre of Perth (note that there is a frequent bus service from outside the Cherrybank) along Glasgow Road. There really was a lot of support for St Johnstone in the city - there were banners on almost every lamp-post, scarves & banners in a lot of house windows, and as well as Inveralmond's blue beer there have been reports of blue cakes (OK), blue pies (getting weird) and blue rice with curries (getting very weird). All the pubs are certainly getting involved - this was the Bee Bar in the city centre (nice windows too, but not a great selection of beer).

From the centre of Perth it's not too far to the North Inch Park area; it's a large open park next to the Tay with football & rugby pitches which eventually meld into the North Inch Golf Club. At the side of the rugby pitches I could hear the sound of the Perth Beer Festival well before I could see it, with its large marquee, bouncy castle/slides and BBQ food.

Inside the marquee there were lots of plastic tables & chairs under cover and a long bar at the back manned by a group of very friendly, patient staff from Perth Rugby Club (and friends).

Unfortunately it was plastic glasses only (unless perhaps you had singed up for Céilidh at night) but there was certainly enough redundancy for the 24 or so beers on offer, multiple casks (and the odd keg) were in operation since I think they ran out quite early last year. Unsurprisingly there were quite a few Perth-based Inveralmond beers, of which I think my favourite was the slightly cherry-sour Märzenfest, and then single beers from a number of Scottish breweries (Stewart, Strathbraan, MòR, Loch Lomond etc...) and a few from England (Elland, Hop Back, Moles). There definitely were a large number of golden ales available, but I think my beer of the festival was the more amber Best Bitter of Moles Molecatcher, some definite malty sweetness, with some spicy blackberries & a bittersweet finish.

As well as all the beer there a massed band to deliver some music (and a great choir later on)...

some chain-saw wood sculpting (impressive, noisy and quite expensive)...

and (of course) a lot of 7's rugby matches to watch outside on the 3 pitches. These were split into various groups, and I wasn't quite sure who was playing who at times, but it was still fun good to watch for a while. Some took it a bit more seriously than others and it was entertaining to see some of the guys come straight off the pitch and head to the beer tent for 'refreshment'. After working my way through the beers I hadn't had before (and some old favourites) I decided it was time to head off and try a couple of pubs in Perth. The first one I came to was the Old Ship Inn, located just off the main shopping precinct and meant to be the oldest pub in Perth (great pub-sign too).

It's a bit of a strange 'L'-shaped place inside with an 'L'-shaped bar towards the back corner, but there's a cracking painting, some nice window-work, wood panelling and comfy seating down one arm of the 'L'.

It's a Belhaven pub so on the 2 (sometimes 3) hand-pulls they only have Belhaven/Greene King beers and the occasional guests, but I was intrigued to see if the Old Ship Ale was the generic Greene King 'house ale' - and yes it was, sigh...

With only a short amount of time left before my train back to Glasgow my last stop was the compact & perfectly formed Greyfriars Bar on South Street.

It was very quiet this afternoon with only only 1 customer and 1 barman downstairs, both reading the newspapers at the front of the bar - I'm guessing the Beer Festival was taking a bit of their business away at least until it started to become a ticket event at 6pm. This meant I could take a look around the place; full of exposed brickwork, film & band prints on the walls, tartan curtains and this corner at the window is where the music happens most weekends (it's normally only 1 or 2 people, not a full band).

There is also a small room upstairs, mostly used at lunchtime when the downstairs bar is choc-a-bloc (this doesn't take too many people at all).

From the 3 hand-pulls I was able to have a couple more blue Saints 130 Ales with some very spicy jalapeño pepper snacks before getting the train back to Glasgow; I dread to think what my insides were going to be like in the next couple of days.

Return travel:-
  Train: Perth to Glasgow Queen St. (~15 on the hour and some others)

A loop around Perth and Bankfoot: 3rd August 2013

I decided I was going to risk the intermittently thundery/scorching weather this weekend and head out for another cycle between some country pubs (I think that if this keeps up I may have to contemplate purchasing my own bike or at least investing in some lycra, with the former seeming more likely). So my plan was to travel to Perth, loop around the small Perthshire village of Bankfoot, home to the eponymously named Bankfoot Inn, and look out for the new Strathbraan Brewery beer which was hopefully appearing at some point over the long holiday weekend at their local Beer Festival.


View Bankfoot in a larger map

Outward journey was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Queen St to Perth (41 on the hour)

After alighting at Perth station I walked the short distance along King/Marshall Place and up Princess Street until I found Perth City Cycles, a popular place located behind a set of stone archways.

I'd pre-booked a hire bike from them (tel. 01738 639346) so I knew I was getting something a bit out of the ordinary - in this case a hybrid bike with a drive shaft and not a chain. It certainly looked a bit different, but apart from the fact that it only had 7 gears I found it more than acceptable for cycling along paths and minor roads (and the fact that you could change gear when stationary was great). Fully kitted out I then headed east to the River Tay to join National Cycle Route 77 which follows the river north and cuts a path through the North Inch golf course. After 15 minutes or so I took the turning marked for Luncarty which crosses the River Almond and then double backs to run alongside the busy A9 route to Inverness and the Highlands. Thankfully this only lasted for a mile or so before I followed a minor road and entered Luncarty. Here I had to join the more busy B9099 road for a couple of miles until I reached the small town of Stanley (which was really quite great/strange in that I am currently an employee of Stanley UK!). The town is situated on sharp bend in the River Tay where the river flows extremely fast, and it's here, at the bottom of a steep hill, that the huge Stanley Mills buildings were constructed in the 18th & 19th Centuries to process cotton and other raw material - it and New Lanark are probably the best preserved Mills complexes in Scotland.

At one time the huge Mills employed 2000 people from a town population of only 2500, but it eventually closed in 1989 and is now a combination of an interactive museum telling the story of life in the Mills through the ages and also a large number residential homes (with great terraced views of the River Tay).

I climbed back up the hill to Stanley and all around I could see the old cottages for the Mills workers, although I don't think they had satellite TV back in those days.

On the road out of Stanley I came to the Tayside Hotel, and since it was almost dead on 12noon, a perfect place to stop for lunch and a beer.

I locked the bike in the large car park and entered the hotel through the main foyer. On the right hand side was a bookcase laden corridor leading to a large dining room, and on the left was the main lounge bar, full of natural light and soft upholstery, with the walls covered with photos of salmon fisherman and their catches, and lots of animal & bird figures and other bric-a-brac dotted about.

The was a nice polished wooden bar at the far end of the room, with taps for Tennents, Caledonian Best, Magners and Heverlee 'Belgian Ale' (so purely C&C beers then), and although there were 2 hand-pulls there was nothing on them (and not likely to be anything this weekend, sigh...). However there were at least bottles of Inveralmond beers to be had and so I took a bottle of Lia Fail, ordered lunch, and tried to count the number of salmon photos on the walls (I gave up at 27).

Lunch was a plate of nachos, complete with spicy salsa, jalapenos, masses of cheese and seriously thick sour cream, very good indeed, but they also do sandwiches, wraps and the standard range of pub lunches.

After leaving Stanley and the Tayside Hotel I was able to get off the busy B9099 road and head north on a narrow minor road passing some through some small farms until another cross-junction. This was all slightly uphill and then when I got onto this more south-westerly running road I was heading back into the teeth of a strengthening wind; at times it seemed as if I was hardly making more than walking pace and I was getting pretty tired (and disheartened). Thankfully out of the rolling hills & fields came the sight of Stewart Tower Dairy Ice Cream Parlour & Café, a welcome oasis in the middle of the Perthshire countryside and somewhere I hadn't known about at all beforehand (I don't like this new Google Maps incarnation).

There's a deli here selling all manner of organic fruit & veg, meat, preserves, cheeses etc..., but more important (to me) were the café in the round building and the fabulous choice of ice cream in the ice cream parlour. This is all made on-site with milk from cows from their own herd and there are normally 18 or so flavours to choose from - the 'staples' and some more interesting ones. Scanning though them the 'Jammie Dodger' caught my eye today - vanilla & strawberry with crushed jammie dodger biscuits. To say this was sweet, sticky & chewy was an absolute understatement but it was also fantastic & creamy and up there with some of the best ice creams I've had.

I went to sit outside (no-one else was brave enough to do so for some unknown reason) and enjoyed consuming probably my daily amount of calories in a single ice cream. Now fully energised I was able to finish the last part of this leg into the wind and headed under the A9 underpass to Bankfoot. Before settling down at the Bankfoot Inn I decided that a detour to the Perthshire Visitor Centre only a few hundred metres down the road was probably worthwhile. This has the normal selection of touristy shops & restaurants, but there's a pretty decent choice of bottled beer (including those from Strathbraan)...

...and a number of whisky-based liqueurs from the nearby Scottish Liquer Centre, so I purchased a couple of miniatures that I hadn't seen before.

Now it was time to head to the centre of Bankfoot and pitch up at The Bankfoot Inn for an hour or so before the first of the afternoon's showers swept in from the darkening horizon.

It's a traditional coaching inn dating back to Jacobean times and from what I could gather there's been a lot of time and money spent on the place over the last few years by the current owners. The lounge bar is all exposed brickwork, wooden gantry & flooring with 3 hand-pulls available at all times from the small bar.

The dining area is more of the same - half a dozen or so tables with a book case full of spirits and old books; it looked like a really nice place to have something to eat.

I met some of the Tayside CAMRA people (including ex-Angus Ales brewer, Alan Lawson) in the larger main bar on the other side of the building; there are no hand-pulls here but it seems to be where the locals congregate in the evenings. However it wasn't long before we decided that the rain was off and so we headed out into the lovely courtyard beer garden where the casks were being lovingly kept in a perfectly formed serving area.

I think this was their first ever Beer Festival and someone had definitely made an effort to get some interesting beers - Scottish beers from local breweries Strathbraan, Inveralmond & Cairngorm as well as those from Windswept & Speyside Craft, and then also English/Welsh beers from Adnams, Liverpool Craft, Lytham and some others I hadn't heard of at all; a really nice selection indeed, and the pump-clips of those that were available were all 'displayed' on the large mirror in the courtyard serving area.

I managed 1/2s of quite a few beers - Strathbraan's new Look West was there (blond, refreshing & citrusy), and I also enjoyed the lovely malty/bitter balance of Red Duke from Privateer Beers (a new micro from Manchester) and the 'Olde English Ale' that was T'owd Navigation by Nobby's (Northampton), but it was also great just to chat to some fellow enthusiasts, the more than helpful staff and some of the local residents out for the afternoon. It would have been really quite easy to stay in the courtyard for the rest of the afternoon, have a BBQ burger or 2, listen to the live music in the evening and then stagger back home, but unfortunately home was ~80 miles away. So I bade my farewells and got back on the bike, this time to follow Cycle Route 77 all the way back to Perth. Thankfully this was now mostly downhill and over some very quiet back-roads through the Perthshire countryside. After 45 minutes or so of cycling I came to the small village of Pitcairngreen and the location of the stunning picturesque Pitcairngreen Inn.

I lent the bike against one of the outside tables and noted the open door with the Strathbraan Brewery sign, an arrow pointing inside and the tag line 'Look No Further'; about as good a welcome as you can get for a pub.

And there was indeed a Strathbraan beer available, their new Look West (again), as well as Cairngorm Sheepshagers Gold (obviously not an offensive sign hereabouts) and Wylam Gold Tankard. All 3 are pretty good beers, but when in doubt I normally go for the local beer, so a pint of citrusy Look West it was.

I think there's a lounge and dining area on the left hand side of the Inn (the food is meant to be excellent), but I only managed the bar on the right hand side. It's one of those old fashioned large, cavern-like bars - lots of seats at the actual bar counter, lots of standing room and then a number of tables & chairs on the opposite far wall; you would almost need a loudspeaker to talk to the the bar staff when sitting at the tables opposite.

I decided that this would have to be my last stop if I was going to get the train I wanted back to Glasgow. I therefore sped through the village of Almondbank without stopping, decided against trying to gatecrash the Inveralmond Brewery staff BBQ, and followed the Cycle Path alongside the River Tay back to the centre of Perth. I did make some good time here so once I had returned my bike to Perth City Cycles, I just had enough leeway to drop into Greyfriars on South Street (it was vaguely on my way back to the train station).

It's a fairly small place (although there is seating upstairs for lunch), with lots of exposed brickwork and a dark wooden bar, but the welcome is always very warm. I managed a very quick half of Strathbraan Head East before actually having to head west to the station and further on to Glasgow. I'll definitely have to pay a more extended visit to Perth at some point in the future.

Return journey:-
  Train: Perth to Glasgow Queen St (11 on the hour)