Help! Where in Perthshire for young families??

[Lilac19]

Hi everyone, first time poster. We are a family of 3 my
our dd is 17 mths and we live in Glasgow. My dh and I have decided we want to live somewhere semi-rural and have settled on Perthshire. Important things are as you would expect - good schools, low crime and deprivation, nice community and esp one that would be accepting and welcoming of incomers (im from glasgow and dh aberdeen). would like to be in a village or small town a few miles from a town and preferably 30/40 mins from a city. We have recently been to Blairgowrie and Alyth. Online ive been looking at Scone, Stanley, Crieff, Callander. Can anyone help me out and give me their thoughts and suggestions on the best place for a young family? Thanks all I feel like im looking for a needle in a haystack!

I personally think Crieff is a lovely place but would choose Callander out of all of them. Callander is lovely, has with a fairly robust high street (it has a Christmas shop, I love that place!), it’s about twenty minutes from Stirling which is a great little city with lots to do and very central to getting anywhere you need to. If i were you I would take a drive and have a look around then drive in to Stirling, see what you think and if you like the look of it have a look at the schools and activities available and see if it’s suitable for your family.

Crieff is lovely, don't know about the schools. I'm not fond of Callander myself, but the surrounding area is gorgeous, it's friendly and the High School is good

You could also look at Kippen, lovely village just 15mins from Stirling

If you want more rural you could check out Aberfeldy.

I’d go for Longforgan or Invergowrie. Both have a rural country feel, but Dundee is on your doorstep with absolutely loads for kids to do, 20 mins to Perth, 1hr to Edinburgh, 90mins to Glasgow. You’ll also find more of the cosmopolitan Dundee commuters (NHS and Uni staff) in these villages, so extremely open to newcomers.

As someone has moved around a lot for work (rural Perthshire, Glasgow, Dundee, Highland, Moray, the islands) I would always recommend staying reasonably close to a city. It’s very possible to feel very rural in Scotland while being close to town. When you go too far out it can feel much tougher to be accepted. There will be the people who went to school together, had kids at the same age etc and it can be lonely at the school gates when they have long established friendships and don’t need or want to get to know someone new.

BTW I love Blairgowrie and Alyth -lived nearby for a long time, but I would class these as having the problem I described.

Callendar is lovely but it suffers from traffic pouring through the high street. Check out Aberfeldy which has a cinema, nice newish pool etc, new supermarket and good cafes. It’s small though as is Dunkeld which is v pretty!

I grew up in the Blairgowrie/Alyth area and loved it so perhaps a bit biased. Still have friends and family locally but no idea what it’s like to live there now with kids etc (although we have considered moving back in the past). I always thought Crieff and Auchterarder looked lovely places and nicely placed for access to Perth, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Aberfeldy and Pitlochry are lovely too. Just a great part of the world.

Move to Scone, I lived there for 9 years, it has a great primary school and it’s only 2.5 miles from Perth, do not move anywhere else in Perthshire Scone is the best. But do your own research.

I’m from Crieff so I am biased....

Definitely Crieff. The Hydro has loads of mum and toddler groups and other activities. Morrison Academy is the very well thought of fee paying school but the local schools get a great reputation too.

Comrie is nice too but nothing much to do there.

Take a look at Auchterarder.. I grew up there & loved it!

Hi thanks so much to everyone for taking the time out to leave youre messages will definitely aim to look around the cities for country spots thats good advice and could help us narrow the search. We are luckily not too far that we can head out to places for a wee day trip to check them out. Loving all the feedback folks thanks again!

Aberfeldy. And visit into Glen Lyon. In fact, move to Glen Lyon!

Invergowrie and Longforgan both have a lot of incomers so you may find it more friendly

Thanks :-) We went to Doune and Callendar today for lunch and a wee look about. Had such a great day, its a very beautiful setting we loved it. So child friendly and friendly in general. It ticks a lot of boxes x

Agree with cantrememberpassword, Scone is ideal. Great school, couple of nice parks, a good few handy wee shops and just generally a nice community feel to it. Just a short bus ride into Perth which is looking great these days, and loads going on. You'll love it!
Good luck wherever you end up.

I forgot about Doune! I have to say that I used to hang about there as a teen, I had a friend who went to McLaren high and had pals in Doune. It was a rather dull place to be a teen and some of the things the youngsters got up to entertain themselves were rather alarming ( at least to parents of younger kids), mind you I suspect it would not be much different in most Scottish rural towns! Please consider good public transport links if you plan to stay long term.

Doune is gorgeous. So is Scone. I'd suggest finding 3-4 towns/a handful of villages and seeing what houses come up for sale/to rent (depending which you're intending to do) so you can find somewhere you'd like to be and which has the sort of house you want to live in, as houses in any given price range don't necessarily come up in any given village that often.

Pitlochry is amazing but houses are expensive. I have friends in crieff and the schools are good plus easy to get to glasgow

We actually did what @WhatTiggersDoBest 20 years ago, had a very wide net and ended up in Dollar after looking all over Perth and Stirlingshire, it was a seller's market at the time and not much in our budget. We also had a tenancy deadline. I still remember some nice properties in Muthil, Stanley, Kippen and we put an offer in on somewhere in Doune.
If you want to stay accessible to Glasgow, gargunnock, Kippen, arnprior, Buclyvie, Thornhill etc. Might be worth a look. If distance from Glasgow doesn't matter if take a look at Kinrosshire villages.