A84
A84 | |||||||
Location Map ( geo) | |||||||
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From: | Stirling (NS796944) | ||||||
To: | Lochearnhead (NN588238) | ||||||
Distance: | 29 miles (46.7 km) | ||||||
Meets: | A9, A811, M9, A873, A820, A81, A821, A85 | ||||||
Primary Destinations | |||||||
Highway Authorities | |||||||
Traditional Counties | |||||||
Route outline (key) | |||||||
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The A84 is a real "Gateway to the Highlands", running from the flat lands around the city of Stirling west into the mountains to Strathyre and Loch Earn. At only 29 miles in length, the route might be short, but it is a great drive, and holds the distinction of being one of only sixteen F99 routes that maintain green-signage throughout their entire length; the others are the A12, A14, A16, A17, A22, A42, A43, A45, A53, A55, A75, A78, A83, A86, and A87.
Route
Stirling - Callander
The route starts at the Customs Roundabout on the A9 in Stirling, beside Stirling Bridge and the River Forth. The roundabout is dominated by an old stone clock tower, which gives it the local name of 'Clock Roundabout'. It heads west along Drip Road and after a very short run, it reaches the Laurencecroft Roundabout, where it forks left onto Back O' Hill Road, which curves around the base of the steep Castle Rock. This part of the route was upgraded from an old unclassified road in the early 2000s to bypass the Raploch housing scheme. Traffic Lights mark the entrance to a supermarket, and then the Back O' Hill Roundabout gives access into a small industrial estate. It meets the A811 at the Ballengeich Roundabout next to the fire station; the A811 having been rerouted here in 2010 along part of the B8051 to bypass the city centre. Turning right, fields now lie off to the left, with a small park and then a business park on the right. After the Castleview Roundabout, which also gives access to a park and ride site, the A84 reaches Craigforth Interchange on the M9, where it becomes a trunk road.
From the motorway to the A820 junction at Doune the road has lowland characteristics as it runs through the arable farming lands of the Carse of Lecropt. Almost immediately after the motorway junction, the River Forth is crossed on the Drip Bridge. A final roundabout then gives access to the Stirling Agricultural Centre, beyond which the route kinks left onto a series of long straights across Drip Moss and Blairdrummond Moss. A busy crossroads gives access to the Blair Drummond Safari Park and soon after the B8075 and the A873 turn off to the left in quick succession. The latter junction marks the end of the straights, with the A84 sweeping round Meldrum Corner as it climbs behind Boreland Hill. Two short straights drop it down into the edge of Doune, where the B826 and B8032 both turn off to the left, the latter immediately before Doune Bridge carries the A84 over the River Teith.
The A84 somehow manages to curve through the middle of this pretty town, without any properties on the roadside, and only two junctions to really worry about. The first is with George Street, a short stub of the B8032, long since reduced to one way out of the town centre. The second is much busier, being the A820, which provides a shortcut across to Dunblane and the A9 for eastbound traffic. There is now also a housing scheme on the south side of the road a little further along, so the A84 can't claim to be a proper bypass to Doune.
Doune - Kilmahog
Once out of town, a long tree lined straight leads to the tiny settlement of Buchany, a dozen or so old houses crowded along the roadside. The antiques centre on the hillside just before Buchany is also home to the Doune Hill Climb Course. From Doune to Callander the route is following the River Teith upstream and has a more upland nature as it runs through sheep country interspersed with some forestry. West of Buchany it definitively picks up the line of one of of the old Military Road from Stirling to Fort William, and follows it with minimal deviation for the rest of the route. A couple of tight bends take the road over the Annet Burn and then onto a long straight which leads into forestry. A narrower, windy section through the trees quickly leads on to a series of wider, sweeping bends, which offer limited forward visibility if slower traffic is encountered. The Highland's can be seen ahead, with a clear view of Ben Ledi through the gaps in the trees. After passing the houses at Drumvaich, the road is briefly on the riverbank, and then follows a long right hand curve which seems to go on for ever before finally straightening up.
It always feels as if the road is running down a long hill to the Bridge of Keltie over the Keltie Water, but in fact it is the slightest of gradients, and then a gentle left leads into Callander, "Tannochbrae" of the 1960s Doctor Findlay TV series. Callander is a tourist magnet and can be very congested throughout the year these days, but particularly on summer weekends. A bypass would probably be beneficial, but the town now lies with the national park, so it would be environmentally difficult, and the businesses worry about losing trade. For now, then, it can be a slow crawl along Stirling Road through nearly a mile of twentieth century suburbia before the old town centre is reached. Main Street is then lined with shops, businesses, parked cars, delivery lorries, buses, coaches and quite often tourists in the road because the pavements aren't wide enough.
Just beyond the tree-lined town square, the A81 comes in from the left at a signalised crossroads. Westbound the congestion eases slightly beyond, although there can be queued eastbound traffic stretching right out of the town from this junction. The old railway station - now a car park lies off to the right, with another on the riverside to the left which often floods in winter. A few windy bends lead out past some fine Victorian villas on Leny Road, and then the last house is passed and a short straight opens up ahead. Glimpses ahead through the trees show the hills are closing in, with the route finally entering the Highlands. Just before it does, however, the tiny settlement of Kilmahog has to be navigated. The original road still runs between the houses, while the A84 has a short "bypass" that is hardly an improvement. A long, narrow curve around a field passes through the junction with the A821, which is unnecessarily awkward and crying out to be improved. An Old Tollhouse stands facing the junction, proving it has hardly changed since horses and carts were the largest traffic.
Kilmahog - Lochearnhead
The Highland Boundary Fault line is crossed near Kilmahog, and the character of the road changes dramatically as it enters the Pass of Leny, a deep rocky chasm carved millennia ago by the River Teith. The river is occasionally glimpsed, foaming over the rocks down on the left, while steep slopes rise precipitously at times to the right. The A84 threads its way through with a series of blind summits, hidden dips and tight corners under the overhanging canopy of trees. Once through the pass the road widens a little as it passes the entrance to a forestry site with car parks, walks and cabins strung along the old railway line, now a popular cycle route. It then kinks left onto the "Anie Straight" which leads to the south end of Loch Lubnaig. This section is prone to flooding in severe rainfall and snow melt. At the end, a very sharp right-hander at St Bride's Chapel - a graveyard with "Rob Roy" connections - leads onto a tight horseshoe bend around a pool at the foot of the loch.
The next five or six miles follow the eastern shore of Loch Lubnaig. With forestry climbing up to the right, the loch never far away to the left and the view north west over the Loch to Ben More and Stob Binnein, this should be a fine drive through stunning scenery. Unfortunately, the road has other ideas and is constantly changing between wide, fast sweeping bends and narrow tight corners over blind crests. Traffic can often slow to a crawl over this tortuous section of the A84, and on bright days the small car parks and laybys are woefully insufficient for the number of vehicles wanting to stop. There are a couple of short straights towards the northern end of the loch, the second lying between two tight bends around rocky bluffs. The second of these lies at the very head of the loch and is locally known as "Doctor's Corner" after a local doctor who didn't make it one night on an emergency call. It had not been improved, and large vehicles creep round it in case of oncoming traffic.
Once clear of this bend, the road soon opens up into a wide, fast blast into Strathyre. A large campsite lies on the riverbank at the entrance to the village, which is lined with a long row of older houses on the right. Before the railway came there was barely a farm here, but at its height there were three hotels and numerous guest houses catering for the Victorian and Edwardian tourists, even today it is a popular stopping point for many people. With the exception of a couple of bends, the road remains good as it climbs slightly alongside the old railway again to reach the old Kingshouse Hotel and the junction with the "C" Class Braes of Balquhidder road. A long fast bend bypasses the hotel itself, and crosses over the side road before becoming narrower and windier as it climbs more steeply into the small village of Balquidder station, and the routes summit at just over 150m. This was once a rural, isolated station for the Balquiddher area, but again a scattering of houses were built, and for a time it was the junction for the branch line back down Loch Earn towards Perth. Today the old station site is a holiday park, beyond which the A84 soon opens up once more.
The final run leads downhill past the Edinchip estate, through what was until recently dense forestry, but has been felled and replanted in recent years. As the road starts to drop more steeply, it crosses the old branch line, and turns away from the cycle route which had been in the trees on the roadside. A right turn at the bottom of the hill leads along the southern shore of Loch Earn, while the A84 sweeps left into Lochearnhead. There are some fine views down the loch from the road, and small sails can often be seen on the water, which is a popular watersports venue. After passing a scattering of houses enjoying this view, the A84 comes to an end at a junction where it becomes the A85 at a TOTSO. The route ahead climbs northward through Glen Ogle - Scotland's "Khyber Pass" and on towards the spectacular West Highlands.
History
As noted above, the A84 west of Doune loosely follows the line of the old military road built by Major Caulfeild in the 1750s from Stirling to Fort William. West of Callendar, the route through the Pass of Leny and over the hills to Balquiddher and Lochearnhead had probably been used for centuries as a natural pass through the hills, and was latterly used by cattle drovers, especially after the Tryst moved from Crieff to Falkirk. The route was further improved in the 1810s by Thomas Telford when it came under the remit of his commission on Highland Roads and Bridges. Since then, many sections of the route have seen further improvement, but there are doubtless sections which still follow the line laid out in the 1750s with only the bare minimum of widening to accommodate modern traffic.
There has only really been one major change to the route of the A84 since it was first classified in 1922, and that is within Stirling itself. In late 2005, it was re-routed away from Raploch to allow for a major redevelopment of what had become a somewhat run-down part of the city. Following improvement work on Back O' Hill Road, the A84 was diverted via a new roundabout and so it now leaves Stirling by curving round the wooded base of the Castle Rock. When it was first diverted, many people considered that the shorter route along Raploch Road was quicker, but this has since had a lot of work carried out, including narrowing, traffic calming and a lower speed limit installed meaning this is no longer the case.
On the edge of Stirling, the old line of Drip Road can still be traced to the north side of the roundabouts, running through the new service area, then forming a DVSA checkpoint and a picnic layby on the far side of the motorway. The long, straight run out to Blair Drummond Junction is then unchanged, but the sliproad onto the A873 shows where there has been a minor realignment through the junction itself. The next notable change lies at Cambusbeg, beyond Drumvaich (where the road has been moved slightly away from the houses to provide parking space). This 0.7 mile Realignment was completed in 1972, per the 1972 Scottish Development Department Report, and the old road can still be traced through the trees on the left. The eastern end is very overgrown, but the remainder can still be walked, although the farmer has now gated it at both ends.
Between here and Callendar, the road has been widened throughout, but the only deviation from the old line appears to be at Bridge of Keltie, where the old bridge stood a few metres upstream, but houses now cover the old road line here. From Callendar to Kingshouse any improvements have been online, save for the short and old bypass around the now derelict second woollen mill site at Kilmahog. Kingshouse enjoys a lengthy bypass section, and the old road is easy to find running along the edge of the trees and past the front of the hotel back to the junction, further improvements as far as the end of the route are again all more-or less online, although here and there a wandering boundary fence or layby hints at the removal of a bend.
Old Military Road
In order to avoid bridging too many rivers, the military road left Stirling along the modern route of the A9, passing through Causewayhead and Bridge of Allan. This was also the route north to Crieff as far as Lecropt Church, near where the two routes split. The Fort William road cut off through the Keir Estate, but its precise route is difficult to trace at first. Beyond the driveway to Keir House, the old road remains as an estate road through the strip of woodland known as Icehouse Strip. It can then be traced as a crop mark cutting across to the B824 near the David Stirling Memorial. As the B824 turns hard right to meet the A820, the military road probably continued across the field onto the Main Street through Doune, and so picked up the A84 at the western end of the town.
As far as can be ascertained, the old line of the A84 remained on the alignment of the military road through Callendar and the Pass of Leny. However, at the start of the Anie Straight, the old road forks right and follows the base of the hill around the back of the field, before climbing over the hill to the shores of Loch Lubnaig. Apart from the first section behind the field, most of this part of the old road is still in use as the drive up to Anie House and then a track back to the A84.
The next deviation is at Kingshouse, where clearly the old road line was the military road. However, at the far end of this, takes to the hillside, and is loosely followed by the modern cycletrack for a time. The old road continues ahead where the cycle route turns right, and can be followed as a rough track as far as the old railway line, and beyond it is a boggy break in the trees. This then passes below Edinchip House and soon becomes the drive through Edinchip Farm. This then drops back down to the modern A84 in Lochearnhead along Craggan Lane. It is not clear whether the current line of the A84 here was built by Telford, or if it was built many years later to better serve the new railway. It has, however, been the main road since they were numbered in 1922.