Why Scotland's most underrated city will soon be even easier to visit

Telegraph

22-06-2025

Was Mary, Queen of Scots, the world's first footballer? Did Wild West outlaw Butch Cassidy take his inspiration from Rob Roy? And is William Wallace buried in a secret, unmarked grave? These are the questions travellers to Stirling are regularly asked by Ken Gray, a proud 70-something tour guide who fizzes with youthful enthusiasm about his hometown. His brainteasers spring up, have you puzzling, then leave you pondering why you've never visited this 900-year-old riddle of streets and spires before.
'Did you know Scotland's answer to the Wright Brothers launched their first plane over there?' he asked me, pointing to sunlit orchards in the distance. 'That's Stirling. Always ready to surprise.'
More than one hundred years after the Barnwell Brothers made Scottish aviation history in summer 1909, Stirling is preparing for another first. From spring 2026, budget train operator Lumo is to launch the first direct service between Stirling and London. It will run up to five times daily, and as well as bringing Scots south, will put rail travellers from London Euston, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton, Crewe, Preston and Carlisle within grasp of all the same reasons I was there: forgetting Edinburgh, this is clearly the most history-rich city in Scotland.
Certainly, seen from its crag-topped esplanade, Stirling gives the impression of not being quite real. To the north of us was its imposing castle, rising ragged from a bluff of cliffs, its ramparts and great halls bathed in sun. To the south, a sloping ridge underpinned by a jumble of Renaissance townhouses, tolbooths and a rippling cemetery of lopsided stones, among them that of Butch Cassidy's great-uncle. 'Stumbling on history is a given here,' chipped in the Scottish Tourist Guides Association guide, as the gravestones writhed around us.
There is also the notion that this former barracks town is Scotland's real heart. A short stroll below the Old Town Jail – built in the mid-19 th century to replace what was then rated as Britain's worst prison – is The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum. Tartan, woven nearby in Bannockburn, fills the galleries with colour. Paintings show Stirling and William Wallace at war and in watercolour. A football, made from a pig's bladder, dating to the 1540s and found lodged in the rafters of the Queen's Chamber in Stirling Castle, is labelled as the world's oldest. Not far away outside, two statues of Robert Burns and Rob Roy bookend the old Corn Exchange. This is Scotland by numbers.
Who will come to Stirling once the sleek new train service starts? I asked. 'Who wouldn't?' replied Ken. 'If they can afford the train tickets, mind.' Those interested in history was my guess, but also those who love the best bits of a small city combined with a bigger adventure, including those offered on two wheels.
At the handlebars of his bike that afternoon was Stuart Meldrum, aka the brains behind Stuart's Bicycle Tours, which launched in Stirling in January. He's another devotee of Stirling and is interested in helping visitors trace the city's myths of origin back to today. His new venture is helped by the £9.5 million recently spent on cycle corridors connecting the Old Town with the 330-acre University of Stirling campus. They only opened last month, and perhaps, that was why we saw few other riders. In future you'll be able to bring your own foldable bike onboard Lumo's services, too.
We began our 11-mile ride by crossing the River Forth, rattling over Stirling Old Bridge, a pedestrian arc of silvery sandstone at a horseshoe bend on the burn. Its architects had conceived it as the lowest crossing point of the Forth, and during the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, when the original timber crossing collapsed and was swept away, it was the key to Sir William Wallace and Sir Andrew Moray leading the Scottish army to victory over Edward I of England.
'This is the real 'Gateway to the Highlands',' said Stuart, as we paused mid-river, the noise of the Old Town having faded. 'It was always said that if you controlled Stirling Castle, you controlled the north. And the only way to get there was to cross here.'
If those sorts of stories in stone suggest a dusty tour of dates, think again. Our journey was a rewarding pedal through Stirling's handsomest landscapes, from dairy farms to cygnet-stocked Airthrey Loch to the forests skirting the Ochil Hills. From there, it was a lung-swelling uphill sprint through oak and ash to Abbey Craig, location of The National Wallace Monument. The Romans were right to call the dark mountain bulks of the Highlands as seen from the summit 'an island apart', and the views compare to any in Central Scotland. We looked up at the church-like bell tower, watched by carrion crows. It felt a lot like Lord of the Rings.
Similarly evocative are the ruins of Cambuskenneth Abbey, where we found ourselves alone. Back in the early 14 th century, the Augustinian monastery acted as Scotland's parliament under Robert the Bruce's leadership, but all that remains is an underappreciated bell tower and a legend that, frankly, few people believe.
Cambuskenneth thrives in the imagination today thanks to its monks, who supposedly brought part of Wallace's dismembered arm to the abbey after he'd been hung, drawn and quartered, secretly giving him a proper burial. For me it was more than a little disappointing to find nothing but overgrown grass and fallen masonry. It was, however, the ideal spot for a last look back at Stirling Castle where, soon enough, we'd ended where we'd started.
The restaurants and pubs of the Old Town helped me slip back into 21st-century Stirling. Swarms of people were filling the outside tables in the cobblestoned Old Town with beer and gossip, and soon I had joined them at No 2 Baker Street. Maybe it was the cold ale from nearby Harviestoun Brewery, but it struck me that if Robert the Bruce, Wallace and Mary were still around today, and ended up where I was, they'd probably be pretty happy with their lot.
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