Birks of Aberfeldy

We had a lazy morning as the weather was a bit dreach. After a late breakfast I headed into Aberfeldy to get some food for this evening. Whilst there I had a coffee in the fabulous Birks Cinema, which has had a rebirth. The community campaign to refurbish the cinema raised £1.8 million, of which £1.3m was for building work and a further £500,000 to establish a company to run it. Its modern redesign has been the work of a local architect, Robin Baker, and the fundraising effort acquired a celebrity patron in another local man, actor Alan Cumming.

Alan recorded the Robert Burns poem The Birks of Aberfeldy on video from the stage of the Broadway theatre in New York, where he was starring in the National Theatre of Scotland's one-man Macbeth, to greet the first cinemagoers.

So it is a bit ironic that I revisited the Birks of Aberfeldy. I visited this beautiful part of Perthshire over the Christmas period.

The Birks of Aberfeldy is a stunning gorge, which provides a dramatic centrepiece, especially impressive after rain. As mentioned before Robert Burns visited in 1787 and was so inspired that he wrote the famous poem `The Birks of Aberfeldy`.