Across Corn Exchange Road from Stirling’s War Memorial is a statue to the historical figure Rob Roy McGregor:-

Information plaque:-

Stirling‘s War Memorial is a stone obelisk on a hexagonal base located in a triangle at the junction of Albert Place and Corn Exchange Road.

From Corn Exchange Road:-

Close up:-

Dedications:-

Name plaques:-

Unveiling infoprmation:-

Doune Castle (see previous post) is built on a promontory just above the River Teith. The river’s banks are pretty overgrown now so it’s not easy to see the river till you get quite close to it.

It must be fine for fishing though as there was an angler there the day we visited:-

The Teith flows on to join with the River Forth just upstream of Stirling. Curiously, the Teith is the wider river at this point but the merged river is called the Forth.

Harper, 2010, 569 p. First published in 2003.

I probably wouldn’t have read this – I wasn’t particularly taken by the author’s The Wire in the Blood – but the good lady had just finished it and mentioned it was set partly in my old stomping ground of Kirkcaldy and partly in St Andrews (which I know well.) So I thought I’d give it a go. The locations in the book aren’t restricted to Fife, it does stray to Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, and even Seattle but the main events take place in what the locals like to call “the Kingdom.”

The prologue lets us know of a Fife Police press announcement of a cold case review and a shadowy figure haunting a cemetery before Part One plunges us into the 1978 discovery of the dying body of Rosie Duff by four students at St Andrews University (schoolfriends calling themselves the Lads Fi’ Kirkcaldy) taking a short cut back to their flat after a party. One of them is a medical student and tries to save her life but fails. As discoverers of the body and covered in blood they naturally become suspects. The investigation cannot summon up evidence even to charge them and the case is unresolved but they are still subjected to suspicion, threats and violence – especially by the dead girl’s brothers. McDermid makes a lot of this finger of suspicion and the effect it has on the four and their relationship(s). Part Two sees the resurrection of the case and its reintrusion into the four’s lives. But in the intervening twenty-five years the main evidence from the victim’s clothing has been lost and there seems little hope of progress. But the review has stirred the old suspicions and someone has the four firmly in the frame.

McDermid’s prose is certainly efficient but rarely rises above the workmanlike. The book’s structure, too, made it slightly odd. Part One was more or less scene setting, involved a lot of information dumping and therefore dragged somewhat. McDermid makes passing reference to the fascistic fringe and government encroachments on citizens’ rights in the late 1970s. (That sort of thing has become even worse of late with intolerance having been adopted into the political mainstream and governments eager to seize any excuse to restrict citizens’ rights.)

I would have said that it was cleverly executed except that the resolution was disappointing. It has more holes in it than Stoke City’s defence and depends too much on the prior withholding of information from the reader. In the last (tie-up) chapter it is revealed that one of the four Lads had a piece of information that would potentially have pointed to the murderer but never told the other three – nor the Police – during all those twenty-five years of suspicion. We can only suppose this was to create an artificial sense of suspense and it kind of obviates the point of the book (no matter what reason he might have had for his reticence.) Moreover the murderer seems to have been able to carry the body up a hill to where the Lads stumbled upon it without seemingly getting any blood on himself, even though the victim had a gaping wound.

McDermid has a wide readership. I assume they don’t like taxing their brains overmuch.

Pedant’s corner:- the main drag (St Andrews has a main drag?) Roger Waters’ (Waters’s. And I know he wrote Shine On You Crazy Diamond but did he sing on it? Wasn’t that David Gilmour?) “[Kirkcaldy’s] Town House looked like one of those less alluring products of Soviet architecture” (is more than a bit harsh. It’s a fine building.) Raith Rovers’ (Raith Rovers’s,) Brahms’ (Brahms’s,) “had strode” (stridden,) “‘Gonnae no dae that’” (is referred to as if it were a catchphrase from the early to mid 1970s. It wasn’t. Chewin’ the Fat, where it originated, was first aired in 1999.) “‘We lay low’” (we lie low – but it was in dialogue and the character had lived in the US for years and they can’t seem to get the lay/lie thing correct over there,) Soanes’ (Soanes’s.) “The sky was clear, a gibbous moon hanging low in the sky between the bridges.” (sky….sky,.) Sainsburys (Sainsbury’s.) Plus several instances of “time interval later”.

Killin stands at the head of Loch Tay on what used to be Perthshire but it is now in Stirling District. Its War Memorial is a dignified statue of a Higland soldier. It’s in a lovely setting by the River Dochart just above the falls.

From the village. WW1 names:-

Front View. Upper plaque for WW1, the lower plaque is for WW2:-

Looking towards the village. WW1 Names:-

I was over west a bit a few weeks ago and finally stopped at the Causewayhead roundabout near the Wallace Monument to photograph the building below which has a nice stepped roofline. You can spot the monument in the background of the second view.

Causewayhead is in Stirling but I believe the road this stands on is called Airthrey Road.

I think the bloke on the phone at the front of the shops wondered what on Earth I was doing.

There is good horizontal detailing on the side pillaring in this next photo. The windows look replacement.

The best bit of the whole layout is the lovely curved wall – in two dimensions – plus deco pillar at the gate.

There is a good deco feel to the gate too. Note the curving on the rear side of the wall pillar as well as its front.

I’ve been in Stirling many times but never really looked for any Art Deco.

We were there a couple of weeks ago, after viewing a house in nearby Bridge of Allan, and wandered into the city centre where I saw this on Murray Place:-

I can’t have looked up before but the frontage (and sideage) is pretty kenspeckle for all that. I don’t know how I could have missed it all those other times I’ve been there. By its appearance it may once have been a Burton’s.

The only other building we saw that remotely resembles deco was on Viewfield Place. Minor deco at best.

Home of Alloa Athletic FC. Situated on Clackmannan Road (the A 907.)

Home Support Entrance with main stand in grey:-

Boundary wall on Clackmannan Road:-

Away support entrance:-

View from away support entrance, down slope to Railway end, Ochil Hills in background:-

In all my visits to Recreation Park up till a couple of years ago there was no railway behind the ground: it had been Beechinged. However, my elder brother told me of some Dumbarton player in the long ago putting a penalty onto the railway. The modern line from Stirling to Alloa (and beyond for goods trains) opened three or four years ago.

The next photo is shifted right slightly to show the away support area. Note temporary stand halfway down. There used to be a large mound of terracing on this side, with a covered area well back from the pitch. It was taken away a few years ago and replaced with this flatter viewing area. Again a nice view of the Ochil Hills in the background.

Terracing, Clackmannan Road end:-

Main stand from away entrance. The artificial turf is obvious here:-

The stand replaced one damaged by fire quite a few years ago now. This is it from the Railway end.

The Railway end terracing still has the mound of earth type of terrace with some railway sleepers for stability:-

Menstrie is a village on the A91 at the Stirling edge of Clackmannanshire. Not much there really but close to hills and the War Memorial is an elegant obelisk.

The 1914-1918 names are in the central shield. 1939-1945 ones are on the plaque below.

This small War Memorial is in the grounds of Abbey Craig Park off Alloa Road, Stirling, just below Abbey Craig and the Wallace Monument.

The inscription on the wall behind.

This plaque commemorates the donor of the land.