Rob Roy – Gaelic for Red Robert – was more properly known as Robert Macgregor. Whether the grazier turned raider was a patriot or a plunderer is not altogether clear, but he and his followers cut a swathe through the Trossachs in the times around the Jacobite rebellion.
Stories circulated of his escapes when captured and his generosity to the poor. He was eventually arrested in 1727 and sentenced to transportation, but later pardoned. Immortalised by Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel, he lived out his remaining years peacefully in the Braes of Balquhidder.
It’s been almost two centuries since Sir Walter Scott put the Trossachs on the map with his romantic tales of Rob Roy. They say the number of carriages passing Loch Katrine rose from 50 to 270 in the year following publication of Scott’s Lacy of the lake (1810). William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy also loved the area and even Queen Victoria visited and gave it the royal seal of approval. In more recent times, Hollywood fuelled the tourist industry with its own versions of Braveheart and Rob Roy. Yet his burial place in the local churchyard in Balquhidder remains tranquil and unspoilt.
You can also visit the Rob Roy & Trossachs Visitors Centre in nearby Callander.