WHEN I was a boy in the 1950s, with relatives in Balfron (also in west Stirlingshire), Drymen seemed a glamorous place.
This was largely on account of the Buchanan Arms Hotel, a fashionable destination for Glasgow people wanting a good lunch or dinner, or a weekend away. The centre of the village, even then had something of the air of a Highland clachan.
There was a plain little church near the centre, which I now know had been built as a secession church in 1819, for this was a part of Scotland where the 18th-century secessions had flourished.