Tayside Quotes

“The Gask Ridge sits like an old frog in a boggy pond edged by hills and mountains. South and east lie the Ochils with their pre-Roman vitrified forts, Gleneagles and, beyond, the Allan Water, which flows away from the Tay through the gap in the hills at Dunblane and into the Forth. To the south and west, due to the sweeping curve of the Highland Line, you look back on the high peaks of the mountains of the Trossachs and into the southern Highlands. Westwards, then to the north, the Perthshire hills with the snow-capped Grampians beyond - their name an erroneously medieval transcription from the Battle o Mons Graupius, which Tacitus describes as the crucial victory of the Roman general Agricola over the united tribes of Caledonia. Led by Calgacus, the first named Scot, Tacitus has him declare in a speech that the invaders 'create desolation and call it peace'. The road, forts and signal towers, and a further large fort at Dalginross, south of Comrie, are integral parts of that Pax Romana, but despite two further incursions into Tayside in the reigns of the emperors Antoninus (AD 142) and Septimius Severus (208), it was over a thousand years before southern influence began to alter this landscape.”
― Robin A. Crawford, The Sound of Many Waters: A Journey along the River Tay