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Ochil HillsThe Ochil Hills are a range of hills in Scotland north of the Forth valley bordered by the towns of Stirling, Alloa, Kinross and Perth. The only major road crossing the hills follows Glen Devon and Glen Eagles, while the M90 Edinburgh-Perth motorway cuts through the eastern foothills. The hills are a Devonian lava extrusion whose southern fault line is particularly prominent today as an escarpment. The plateau is undulating with no prominent peak, the highest point being Ben Cleuch at 721m. The south-flowing burns have cut deep ravines including Dollar Glen, Silver Glen and Alva Glen, often only passable with the aid of wooden walkways. Historically, the hills led to Stirling's importance as the only Gateway to the Highlands and also acted as a boundary to the Kingdom of Fife. Castle Campbell was built at the head of Dollar Glen in the late 1400s (an earlier castle on the site being called Castle Gloom) mainly as a very visible symbol of the Campbell domination of the area. Sheriffmuir, the site of the 1715 battle of the Jacobite rising is on the northern slopes of the hills. In the early Industrial Revolution, several mill towns such as Tillicoultry grew up in the shadow of the Ochils to tap the water power. Some of the mills are open today as museums.
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