Escape to PERTHSHIRE

With its fairytale castles, rich history, and storybook villages laced with antiques and vintage stores, Perthshire is a Highland honeypot, discovers Lucy Gillmore

- Lucy Gillmore

Before she discovered the charms of the Lake District, Beatrix Potter summered for over 10 years in Perthshire. The family’s holidays were not traditional two-week sojourns; the Potters took a house from May until the end of the salmon season in October, close to the village of Dunkeld. It was here, in fact, that she wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and it’s easy to see where she got her inspiration. Dunkeld, on the banks of the River Tay, is whitewashed, picket-fence prettiness, complete with perfectly preserved 17thand 18th-century cottages, restored by the National Trust for Scotland. A ruined medieval cathedral completes the scene.

This patch of Perthshire is bucolic; the Highlands with the rougher corners rubbed off. Picture-postcard villages and buzzing market towns are peppered with antiques and interiors stores, while hidden among the undulating hills you'll find a smattering of antiques treasure troves, from quaint emporiums to Perthshire’s largest auction house, Lindsay Burns & Company. For those after archetypal Highland grandeur, Perthshire has that too, in the north: steep-sided glens, magnificent Munros, vast swathes of Caledonian pine forest, salmon-rich rivers and crystal-clear lochs. And in August, when the heather is in bloom, the drab moorland is transformed into a glorious blanket of purple.

FIVE MUST-SEES

Dunkeld

You won't get lost in teeny Dunkeld (it’s hard to believe that in the 9th century, this was the country’s capital), but you might lose all sense of time as you dip in and out of the galleries, antiques and vintage stores, delis and bakeries along the quaint high street.