Moving to Stirling area – any places to avoid?

As title says – we’ll be moving up to “somewhere around Stirling” in the near future, yay!! Renting to start with, but we would still like to live somewhere with easy access to the trails and also walking distance to a shop (living a bit remote at the moment :-)). Alp_toddler is too young for school, but if there are any real good ones, we’ll try and get near them 🙂

Heard mixed things about Tullibody – too far from trails anyway? Menstrie? Out west of Stirling? Help please…

Thank you 😀

Move to Dunipace, it’s lovely here.

Queue, a long list of other Stirling area residents telling you how great where they live is.

Like every town there are good bits and bad, avoid the Raploch and you should be fine.

PS, I’d suggest posting up on Stirling Bike Club site, they are a great bunch.

Raploch’s brilliant. Most places spread their sh*te thin and far, Stirling puts it all in one place so it’s east to avoid. so as bigG says, rather than listing all the places to avoid, all you need to know is Raploch=No

Tullibody aint too far from the trails, almost on your doorstep infact.

There are some good and bad bits to Tullibody as with anywhere really. Could reccomend avoiding bits of all the towns an villages around Clackmannanshire really but I wouldnt avoid any of them entirely if the right house came up. Be fairly obvious once you go have a look at the place whether it’s in a nice area or not.

Fair point, thank you for your replies – I know there are usually good/bad bits of most places, but it’s always worth asking I think :-)!

We probably won’t be able to check out what it’s like to ride to the hills from every house we might look at, so asking on the Stirling bike club site is a good idea 🙂

The deli in the stirling(ish) dobbies…nom,nom,nom.

hi,

i moved to alloa in 2007 from stirling and i think its a good place to live (you get used to the jokes about trolls at the gates to middle earth etc) 🙂

tullibody has some nice bits too and some not so nice bits (dont know the area name specifically but its towards the alloa side on the left hand side)- been up the woods at the back of there and its like beirut.

Alloa itself has good and bad bits, we’re in the good bit (naturally) at the north end of town. avoid the area known as the bottom end / mar policies as thats where some of the bams live apparently. The only thing with tullibody is that it doesn’t have much of a high street and its not really a destination as such. Alloa itself isn’t exactly a metropolis but it has a reasonably busy high street and a good butchers and a few pubs that you can leave without going out in a body bag.

The other big plus for alloa is the rail station with regular trains to glasgow / edinburgh (takes about an hour to each from alloa)

Lots of good riding from the doorstep and central enough for places like carron valley, fife and the lothians. Also just 2 hours short of fort william / the highlands for superb riding.

all in all a reasonable spot to bide!

hello alp_girl I am both a Stirling resident and a member of SBC – there are a few others on here too. The bike club is quite a friendly place although the roadies outnumber the MTBrs by 6-1 or something, check out the forum for the (dire) chat!

Loads and loads of trails from your doorstep and members in Dunipace/Tullibody/Alloa/Menstrie etc so you won’t be short of riding buddies. Stirling itself has some good areas that don’t cost the earth, like Riverside/Cambuskenneth/Cambusbarron, Torbrex and St Ninians have got developements too. Its a large town rather than a city but I like it!
Mentstrie over Tullibody IMO.

bannockburn = no unless it’s changed dramatically

i was never the biggest fan of alloa but i shall defer to davidrussell as i haven’t really been there as such since the arrival of the railway. and civilisation

if it was me i’d look along the hillfoots – tillicoutry/alva/dollar

If you’re looking for somewhere really nice (but expensive), Bridge of Allan or Dunblane would be the best bet.

Most other bits of Stirling itself are pretty nice. There are a few less-desirable areas but in the grand scheme of things they aren’t that bad. The Hillfoots area would be where I’d probably look. Some nice new housing developments, so likely to be quite family friendly. The only thing that puts me off movin there is the slightly gynacological-sounding town names (Menstrie, Alva).

Oh, and Larbert might be worth a look too, although that’s technically more Falkirk.

i was never the biggest fan of alloa but i shall defer to davidrussell as i haven’t really been there as such since the arrival of the railway. and civilisation

i’m not sure i’d go as far as civilised 🙂

Its just like all areas, you have your bams walking about with no teeth looking like they just ram raided sports direct and followed through into symingtons jewellers, but on the whole its fine. i’d definitely visit an area before moving there though, even if its just at night to see what the streets are like at night – far more revealing than a trip during the day.

Thanks again guys, lots of useful hints!! Will make a list of houses to view next, hope there are enough to actually get to check out quite a few of the places you mentioned 😉 off to rightmove…

Ps genuine lol at the gynae name comment!!!

We just moved to Dunblane. Depending on where you are moving from it is expensive to normal….
It has a brilliant set of schools, trains, bus and cycle to Stirling and central belt. Feels like a proper middle class wee town. 😉
Ours are at St Mary’s, and it the best state school I have seen or had interaction with this year (so far, I have worked with over 100…). The nursery are out in the town/woods/fields/golf course/museum more than in the school…
Some lovely people.
Good trails around, and closer to the proper hills (being on A9…) And the Kippendavie development may yet yield a mini trail centre…