Gartmore

Gartmore is not a hotel town, and that is part of its charm — the Black Bull Inn in the village offers the only rooms on the doorstep, so most visitors treat Gartmore as a quiet base to explore from rather than a destination with a wide choice of places to sleep. Aberfoyle, two miles up the road, has a better spread of small hotels, guest houses and B&Bs geared towards walkers, cyclists and day-trippers heading into Queen Elizabeth Forest Park and onward to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and is worth widening your search to if you want more choice within a short drive of Gartmore.

Further afield, Callander and Stirling both have a fuller range of hotels, from traditional coaching inns to modern chains, and put you within 20-30 minutes of Gartmore and the wider Trossachs by car. Stirling in particular is useful if you want to combine a Trossachs trip with Stirling Castle and the city's other sights, using it as a base for day trips out to Gartmore, Aberfoyle and the loch shores. Self-catering cottages are common throughout this part of Stirlingshire and are often the best way to get a genuinely rural stay close to Gartmore itself, particularly for longer breaks or groups wanting a base among the hills rather than in a town.

Whichever option you choose, book ahead for the summer season and Scottish holiday weekends, when the Trossachs draw visitors from Glasgow and Edinburgh for day trips and short breaks, and rooms in the smaller villages fill up quickly.

Gartmore sits right at the gateway to the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park, so there is a lot to fill a few days without ever getting in the car for long.

• Queen Elizabeth Forest Park — thousands of acres of forest, loch and hill immediately south of the village, laced with way-marked walking and cycling trails through Loch Ard Forest.
• David Marshall Lodge — the forest park's visitor centre near Aberfoyle, with a cafe, wildlife-watching room (ospreys and red squirrels on camera) and the Waterfall Trail out to Little Fawn Waterfall.
• Go Ape Aberfoyle — Scotland's first tree-top adventure course, based at David Marshall Lodge, with zip wires, rope bridges and Tarzan swings through the forest canopy.
• Loch Ard — a beautiful, much quieter loch than its famous neighbour, good for a gentle walk, a picnic or a paddle, a few minutes from Gartmore.
• Aberfoyle — the nearest village of any size, with shops, cafes, the Rob Roy connections that give the area its tourist trail, and the start of the Duke's Pass road over to Loch Katrine.
• Loch Katrine — a short drive over the Duke's Pass, where the steamship Sir Walter Scott cruises the loch that inspired much of the Trossachs' Victorian tourist boom.
• Ben Lomond — visible from the village and climbable from Rowardennan on the loch's eastern shore, the most southerly Munro and one of Scotland's most popular hill walks.

The Black Bull Inn is the village's own pub, serving food and drink and hosting occasional live music in what is very much the community's front room. For more choice, Aberfoyle has a handful of cafes and restaurants geared towards walkers and day-trippers, and the Ben View Garden Centre a short drive from Gartmore has a conservatory restaurant that is popular locally for a sit-down lunch. Do not expect a big-town range of options here — the appeal of Gartmore is exactly that it has kept its scale small.

The hills and forests around Gartmore fall within the area covered by the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, which gives a general right of responsible access to most open land and water in Scotland, including wild camping, provided you camp well away from roads and buildings, keep groups small, and leave no trace. That said, be aware that a seasonal camping management byelaw operates on parts of the east shore of Loch Lomond between March and September, restricting informal camping in specific zones and requiring a permit in season — it is worth checking the current byelaw boundaries before pitching anywhere near the loch itself. Around Gartmore and the wider Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, the rules are more relaxed, though forest tracks, plantation land and anywhere close to the village should still be treated with the same courtesy: arrive late, leave early, and take everything away with you.

The terrain here is proper Trossachs country — forestry plantation, rough hill ground and loch shore rather than manicured lowland, so a decent tent, good boots and a plan for wet weather are essential any time of year. Ground can be soft and midge cover thick close to water and trees in summer, so many campers push a little higher onto more open, breezier ground when the weather allows, both for the views back over Loch Ard Forest to Ben Lomond and to escape the worst of the insects. May, June and September tend to offer the best balance of long days, drier ground and slightly fewer midges than the height of summer, though a midge-proof head net is sensible kit between May and September regardless.

For those who would rather not carry a tent, campsites and glamping options are dotted through the forest park and along the loch, including forestry-run sites offering pitches with a bit more shelter and basic facilities than a wild pitch, plus the odd shepherd's hut or pod for a step up in comfort without losing the sense of being tucked into the forest. Whatever you choose, this is a landscape that rewards a slower pace — a short walk from Gartmore puts you into proper forest and hill country within minutes.