On the Banks of the Allan Water

After all the political excitement of the past week it was time for a quiet walk along the Allan Water.
 
Here Robert Louise Stevenson used to walk during his summer holidays in Bridge of Allan and there is a cave alongside the river which is said to have inspired Treasure Island.
 
There are many accounts of this:
 
Bridge of Allan had a strong hold over RLS’s imagination. In a letter dated 17 November 1868 to his cousin Bob Stevenson he wrote nostalgically about walking along the Darn Walk in Bridge of Allan. When he was in Hyeres in 1883, he wrote “I shall never forget the days at Bridge of Allan; they were one golden dream”
 
“I shall once more lie in bed, and see the little sandy isle in Allan Water, as it is in nature, and the child (that once was me) wading there in butterburs; and wonder at the instancy and virgin freshness of that memory; and be pricked again, in season and out of season, by the desire to weave it into art”
(RLS, “Memoirs of an Islet”, in Memories and Portraits [London: Chatto and Windus, 1911], p. 69).
 

The river has inspired a song  : On the Banks of the Allan Water

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