GLEN TILT, a particularly scenic Scottish glen, Glen Tilt was the site of a long drawn-out Victorian access battle through the Scottish courts when the 6th Duke of Atholl tried to eject a party of wandering botanists. An earlier duke had evicted a large number of residents from Glen Tilt, thus making way for sheep grazing and deer stalking; ruins of some of their homes can be seen today. In 1847, John Hutton Balfour, professor of botany at Edinburgh University, and a group of students visited Glen Tilt. The Duke of Atholl did not take kindly to people in ‘his’ glen and his men challenged Balfour’s party. The story goes that they jumped a wall, ran down the Glen to Blair Atholl pursued by the Duke’s men and relaxed in a pub, supposedly guarded by the Duke’s men to stop them heading back up the Glen. Balfour returned to Edinburgh and persuaded the Association for the Protection of Public Rights of Roadway in and around Edinburgh to take up the cause. The subsequent court case went to the House of Lords and the Association won. Now, you can walk where you like in Glen Tilt.