I'm looking at places to stay for 2 nights close to Drummond Castle, Scone Castle, Glamis Castle, Blair Castle.

I think we would like to stay where we can walk to restaurants and some nice "Scottish" shops.

Most on this forum seem to give a thumbs down to staying in Pitlochry. Is that because of the atmosphere, the town itself, or buses or ???????? We will be there on a Thursday and a Friday night in early July.

I've looked at staying in Dunkeld or Blairgowrie also.

Thoughts?

I think its Ok,last time I stayed there was a couple of years ago.I used the McKenzie B&B on the main road and it was fine.loads of bars and resturants to eat and drink in,though I do think some of them are overpriced.
It is a very Touristy town and that may put some folk off it,but hey for a couple of nights how bad can it be?

We really enjoyed Dunkeld. It is small but quite lovely. We stayed at the Atholl Arms right on the Tay River at the Telford Bridge. They have an excellent restaurant and pub.

It's just a tourist trap with nothing really distinctive.

What's a "Scottish" shop? One where you can buy "Scottish" goods or one where the Scots actually shop? If the former, those are in just about every decent sized town.

The smallest working distillery in Scotland,a dam with a unique fish ladder,a late 17th century hotel with it's own micro brewery,the Heather Gem factory making unusual local jewellery,the only decent theatre for miles,yep nothing distinctive.

I will be spending two nights in Pitlochry this coming September and was well aware of several negative comments about the place. However I needed somewhere for a short stay between Plockton and Edinburgh. I have already been to Blair Antholl several times and Dunkeld as well, so decided on Pitlochry.

I do know that there are a number of great places to stay and several interesting places to visit. We plan to do some walks and even stop at one of the touristy tea shops. In my experience the place (tea shop) will probably have as many locals as tourists. For a couple of nights, I really wouldn't worry about it.

Sorry, more coffee please. It's Blair Atholl. Dunkeld is a lovely spot on the Tay and would make a good option.

We love Pitlochry and have been there several times. The area is beautiful. We stayed at the 5 star Dunfallandy—such a lovely B&B, gorgeous setting, and friendly, helpful hosts. We mentioned overhearing a bit of a conversation at the restaurant concerning publishing another book and asked our B&B host what author lived in the area. She said the Pitlochry area has attracted authors for years and, in fact, several authors live there. She also said, “J K Rowling lives in the area, just there, over the hill.” Pitlochry has the Festival Theater, so maybe you can see a play while you are there.

One of the best meals we’ve ever had was at Fern Cottage in Pitlochry. (I still dream about the chicken breast with Madeira wine and parsley cream entrée I had there. I wish I had the recipe. My husband raved about his scallops. Our dessert was superb, too.)

http://www.ferncottagepitlochry.co.uk/
http://www.dunfallandy.co.uk/

Yep, that's what I tour for -- dams with funny fish ladders and the "only decent theatre for miles" when the town is not far from Edinburgh, Perth, or even Dundee. If that's distinction, the bar has been set quite low.

Thanks unclegus, I found Edradour distillery on a Google search. Since we'll probably stop at some larger ones, Edradour looks interesting.

dancintomusic, Dunfallandy House looks lovely, but I think if we stay there we want to be within walking distance of town. A nice place to stay and good restaurants are important. I've seen Fern Cottage mentioned elsewhere.

We like shops with local products, good crafts, woolens etc. Since we will be out most of the day, I'm also wondering if a town like Pitlochry might tend to have shops open later, even into the evening?

Pitlochry is a place where people stop on their way to or from Highland holidays. There are good places to stay, good places to eat, interesting things to see in the area. Some of them are property owners going to their houses, some of them are planning to tour and stay in hotels or cottages on their visit. I guess that would make them tourists, but then so are all of us when we are away from home.

We loved Pitlochry. We stayed at an amazing Guest House that wins awards for the best in Europe for that size. You can walk to restaurants, we had an amazing meal in town. I loved the shops for buying presents for family. It was a great location for Drummond Castle Gardens and exploring that area. We enjoyed seeing the fish ladder.

This is the link to where we stayed (a five min walk to town if that): http://www.craigatinhouse.co.uk/

I highly recommend it.

I think this is where we ate: http://www.auldsmiddyinn.co.uk/
I remember my husband had salmon here for the first time ever and he loved it, and no he eats it regularly. It was awesome.

We have stayed in Pitlochry twice and really liked it. It is close to Dunkeld (interesting woodland walk there) and Blair Castle. We stayed at the Pine Trees Hotel last October and loved it. It is charming with a wonderful breakfast and great staff-our room( nice bed linens, towels,etc) had a tiny terrace and overlooked a garden-the room was only 100 bp-a great value for such a nice room. It was a short walk down to a restuarant that the hotel recommended-Auld Smithy or something similar and it was quite good. Near Blair Castle is the wonderful House of Bruar which is quite interesting. Beautiful clothes as well as a great food hall-could have spent a day there. There a few nice shops in Pitlochry for clothes shopping.

I'm feeling better about the idea of Pitlochry, thanks for all your input.

I am curious about Blairgowrie. It seems to have some nice B&Bs, what is the town like? If I do a search, it gets mentioned in passing, and "drive through Blairgowrie to" but not much about it as a place to stay for 2-3 days.

I really don't think there's a decent restaurant in Pitlochry. At all.

The Moulin Inn, just outside, is nice and does lovely pub food, but that's it!

Dunkeld is heaps nicer.

Blair is more downmarket.

A couple of well located village pubs/hotels would be the Meikleour Inn and the Amulree Inn.

Other small town options would include Aberfeldy and Kenmore.

There would be nothing wrong with Perth, either.

We booked 3 nights at Craigatin House, I think it looks lovely. In fact it was part of the reason we booked in Pitlochry. And nice to see that amelie liked it.

They had a nice page of recommended restaurants, which I could correlate with TA reviews to make choices easy. I'm having them make dinner reservations for us since we will be there at the end of June/early July, assuming it will be pretty busy then. And dancintomusic, Fern Cottage is one of the places for dinner (along with Port-na-Craig, and Logierait Inn)

I tried hard to stay in Dunkeld, but I just didn't find a place to stay that ticked all the right boxes!

Thanks all!

You will love it! You can easily visit Dunkeld as well like we did. We were glad we stayed at the Craigatin House in Pitlochry instead!

Another restaurant suggestion for Pitlochry is The Old Armoury. Peter Irvine author of <I> Scotland the Best </I> highly recommends it. I believe their website is www.theoldarmouryrestaurant.com

Pitlochry--the Moulin Inn-- a lovely trad inn with great pub food just a walk away across the meadows from Edradour.