Stirling from the West

If my first choice for somewhere in Scotland to live is "Beside the sea", my second option would be "somewhere near Stirling". It's a beautiful town - sorry, City - and its central location makes it a pretty practical place to live. Curiously, it's also about as far from "beside the sea" as it is possible to get in Central Scotland!

Anyway, this is a panorama of Stirling from the west. As I said the other day, the Ochils are a range of hills that suddenly rise out of the remarkably flat flood plain of the River Forth. You can see the Ochils at the left of the panorama.

Going towards the right (i.e. south), the next feature is Abbey Craig, and on top of that the 67m bulk of the Wallace Monument (is Sunday name being the "National Wallace Monument"). Further still to the south, Stirling Castle. This sits on its own hill, imaginatively enough called Castle Hill.

The latter two hills are intrusions, of rock that is much harder than the coal that once surrounded it. Glaciation scoured the coal away and left the flat-bottomed Forth Valley, the intrusions were string enough to resist and remain to this day.