Glen Finglas Visitor Gateway

Glen Finglas Visitor Gateway is the visitor centre in the Lendrick Hill car park, and the practical starting point for exploring the huge Glen Finglas estate. Use it as a planning base rather than a destination in isolation: the building has estate information, printed maps and leaflets, and a free flora-and-fauna exhibition. It makes the choice of walk much easier before you set off.

Most of the estate's nine waymarked walking and cycling routes start here. You can choose a surfaced low-level route, a partly surfaced path with short steep sections, or a more demanding remote route. For families, the natural play trail through Little Druim Wood is the easy choice: allow about 45 minutes for its 2 km circuit and 17 interactive sculptures. It is not completely flat; expect some steps, steeper bits and a busy-road crossing.

Glen Finglas is part of the Great Trossachs Forest National Nature Reserve, a long-running landscape-scale woodland-restoration project. The glen was carved by Ice Age glaciers and was a royal hunting forest for more than 300 years from 1364. That gives the Gateway's interpretation some weight: you're not just collecting a route map, you're seeing how a working landscape is being restored. Red squirrels may turn up near the Gateway or the play-trail feeding station, but treat them as a lucky possibility rather than a promise.

Arrive via the A821, about 0.8 km east of Brig o'Turk, and use the Lendrick Hill car park. It has more than 20 permanent spaces plus 20 seasonal spaces, and the Gateway has an accessible toilet. There is no confirmed food or drink outlet, so bring anything you need before walking. The reservoir and dam viewpoint belong to the wider estate, not this building; reach them via separate routes and parking. If your time is short, stop here for the map and play trail. If you want a long hill day, this is where you choose the route that earns it.