What’s On Spring/Summer

Kaffee und Kuchen Pop Up – Tuesday 26th May 11.00 – 12.30 in the McLean Hall. Kaffee und Kuchen. Coffee and cake, German style.

Think Black Forest gateau, fruit streusel cake with crumbs on top, spiced biscuits, apple cake and the traditional, lighter German version of cheesecake.

If you prefer savouries, then you can feast on mini bratwurst hot dogs, open sandwiches on rye and pastry swirls.

Following an issue raised at the FVA AGM, Asha from the Community Liaison Team of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service will join us at the Pop Up and be available to give advice on home safety.

Strawberry Tea – Saturday 18th July 15.00 – 17.00 in the McLean Hall. What better way to spend a summer’s afternoon than enjoying a strawberry feast in Fearnan. It’s strawberries every which way – from strawberry sandwiches to strawberry cakes and tray bakes, bowls of strawberries and cream, strawberry meringues, chocolate dipped strawberries and much more.

Hall Planter and Noticeboard

At our March AGM, members agreed that the FVA should use some of its funds to purchase a planter for the hall car park and also to fund 50% of the cost of the new hall noticeboard. Both have been purchased and look very smart beside the hall which was recently painted and is looking pretty good for a 71 year old! And Frances is making progress with the hall garden as well.

Many thanks to Cath and Linda who planted-up the planter and have kept it watered when needed.

Recycling Medicine Blister Packs

Jenny writes:

As of May 1^st 2026, I stopped collecting medicine blister packs from friends and neighbours, as the Aberfeldy Vets have a collection box in their entrance way, as well as the SuperDrug Pharmacy in Perth – so it’s now very easy for everyone to recycle their own blister packs.

Many thanks for your support over the last seven years to keep these hard-to-recycle items out of landfill: these items are composed of a complex composition and require specialised recycling via Terracycle. So, together we’ve diverted many, many HUGE bagfulls of these items and enabled them to be repurposed – to utilise the finite resources within them – to live a second life.

Don’t forget there are opportunities to dispose of lots of other hard to recycle items locally, in the Resource Hut. More info here

Many thanks, Jenny, for being willing to cart great bagfulls of our medicine packs all the way to Perth over the last few years and for making us more aware of the implications of just chucking stuff in the landfill bin. Blog Editor.

From the Fearnan Archive

This item, From Fearnan to Tannoch Brae, first appeared on the Blog in 2015.

It’s always fascinating to find out about life in Fearnan in the past and, if we turned the clock back to the first half of the 20^th century, we would find not just a hotel, but a shop, a post office, petrol pumps and……….. a bus! All on the one site at the Tigh an Loan Hotel.

The hotel bus, like the hotel itself, belonged to John Stewart. It not only served the hotel but was also used to make deliveries from the shop to the surrounding area, including Glen Lyon. It was a 15-seater Albion bus, registration ES 5150, which doubled as the village hearse when the need arose.

The bus is pictured here with John Stewart (on the right)  The basket on top will be the hotel laundry, ready to go to Fisher’s Laundry in Aberfeldy. You can see part of one of the old petrol pumps on the left at the back of the picture.

John Stewart did not drive the bus himself but his daughters, Dolly and Mia, regularly took the controls.

This particular bus was first registered in 1922 and although we don’t know how long it remained in Fearnan, we do know what happened to it. It became a TV and film star, appearing in episodes of the BBC’s first series of Dr Finlay’s Casebook in the fictional town of Tannoch Brae, and in two films – ‘Regeneration’ and ‘The Happy Lands’! It is now known as The Pride of Tannoch Brae and is held in the collection of the Biggar Albion Foundation. A more recent photo can be seen here.

The year that John Stewart bought ES 5150, was also the year that he ceased to be a tenant hotelier and bought the hotel from the Breadalbane Estate.

This was 1922, the year the third Marquis of Breadalbane died with no heirs and the vast estate of some half million acres started to be broken up to cover debts and death duties (thereby fulfilling one of the prophesies of the Lady of Lawers).

The significance of this for Fearnan was that many people in the village were also able to become owner-occupiers instead of tenants. The village was sold as a single entity and an intermediary, Henry James Kennaway of Auchterarder, travelled to Edinburgh for the sale. After this, the individual tenants in the village were able to purchase their own crofts from the intermediary, the price being £55 per croft. The agreement included grazing rights on the Cow Park (one cow per croft) and access to a well for water (there were three in the village). However, salmon fishing rights on the loch were lost at this time.

(Many thanks to Alastair Barnett who’s curiosity led him to trace the bus to its present location and to Shenac Kelloe for the photographs and family memories.)