Photo: Michael Garlick (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio tour of Doune Castle and the village beside it. The castle was built for Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, who governed Scotland while the young King James the First was a prisoner in England: the gatehouse tower, almost twenty-nine metres high, with the duke's own hall above the entrance, the Great Hall with no fireplace, the Kitchen Tower and its serving hatches, and the courtyard whose planned ranges were never built after the family's fall in 1425. Film and television know it as Swamp Castle and Camelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Winterfell and Castle Leoch. Then up into the village: the Mercat Cross of about 1620 and the pistol makers Thomas Caddell brought to Doune in 1646, Doune Ponds in an old gravel quarry, the Bridge of Teith of 1535, the Deanston cotton mill of 1785, now a distillery, and, as a separate walk of about two and a half kilometres, the old parish church site at Kilmadock.
9 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 11 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 8 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Doune Castle: the approach from the car park, The gatehouse tower and the Lord's Hall, The Great Hall and the Kitchen Tower, The courtyard and the unfinished ranges.
The Mercat Cross and the Doune pistol makers, Doune Ponds, Bridge of Teith.
Deanston: the cotton mill, Old Kilmadock burial ground.
The duke's own lodging above the only way in, where government prisoners held by the Jacobites escaped down a rope of knotted bedclothes in 1746.
A tall hall heated by a central fire, with no fireplace, fed through elliptical-arched serving hatches from the kitchen.
Projecting stones and pointed-arched windows mark the ranges that were never built after Albany's son Murdoch was executed in 1425.
The market cross of about 1620, and the flintlock pistols made in Doune after Thomas Caddell moved here in 1646.
The two-arched bridge of 1535 that replaced a ferry, crossed by the Highland army in both its advance and retreat in 1745.
A water-powered cotton mill founded in 1785, whose vaulted weaving shed has held maturing whisky since 1966.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 9 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 9 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Doune — the Duke of Albany's Castle, the Pistol Makers and the Teith, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
9 narration points, including The Mercat Cross and the Doune pistol makers, Bridge of Teith, Deanston: the cotton mill, Doune Castle: the approach from the car park and The gatehouse tower and the Lord's Hall. That is about 21 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2 hours, plus the walk to Kilmadock total, but you walk at your own pace. 9 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.