Giant Sausage Rolls Reach Blair Atholl; A9 Traffic Slows as Drivers Stop to Check if They Need a Second Car to Carry One Home
A Dunkeld bakery has opened a branch in the village, and it is staying open all winter. Locals call it 'the most important thing to happen on Ford Street since the road'.
A Perthetic cartoon of Blair Atholl's new arrival. The sausage roll is shown at actual size. Almost. Illustration: Perthetic Cartoon Desk (digital illustration; not a photograph)
Blair Atholl woke up this weekend to find it has a bakery that sells sausage rolls so big that some customers have asked whether they need planning permission.
Livvi’s Little Lunchbox, which already has a following in Dunkeld, opened its second shop on Ford Street on Friday, in the building that used to be Indigo Charlie. Within hours, word had spread up and down the A9 that the sausage rolls are “the size of a draught excluder” and that the Empire biscuits are “exactly as they should be, which is rare”.
One customer is reported to have driven all the way from Edinburgh for a macaroni pie. “People think that’s mad,” said a Blair Atholl man in the queue. “It’s not mad. It’s a macaroni pie. Folk have walked further for less. Bonnie Prince Charlie came through here and he never got a pie at all.”
The big news for the village is that the bakery will stay open over the winter, when the local café usually closes. “Every November we go into hibernation,” said a woman from Bridge of Tilt. “We live on oatcakes and hope. Now there’s a hot sausage roll on Ford Street in January. My husband cried. I think it was happy crying. It might have been the wind.”
Engineers at the Perthetic estimate that one of the giant rolls, laid end to end with others, could reach from Blair Atholl to Pitlochry in about 40,000 rolls, and that this would still be faster than the A9 on a Friday.
Walkers from Blair Castle have already changed their route. “We used to go up the glen and come back for a scone,” said a hillwalker from Perth. “Now we go straight to the bakery, then up the glen to walk it off, then back to the bakery because we’ve walked it off.”
Visitors are advised to bring both hands, a large bag and, if possible, a friend. Dogs are advised to sit very nicely.
The Perthetic wishes the bakery well, and asks only that one roll be kept aside each morning for our Pastry Affairs Correspondent, purely for research.
The real story: Dunkeld bakery opens in Blair Atholl (The Courier)
Letters to the Editor
The views expressed are those of the reader, and frankly that's on them.
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I drove up from Pitlochry for one. Had to put the passenger seat down. My wife came back on the bus.
— Iain M., Pitlochry, 1 November 2026 -
Finally the village is famous for something other than the castle and the midges. I’ll take it.
— Ann R., Blair Atholl, 1 November 2026 -
Big is not the same as good. My uncle’s caravan is big. Nobody’s queueing from Edinburgh for that.
— Gordon T., North Muirton, 1 November 2026 -
A sausage roll you need a second car for is a sausage roll I respect.
— Fiona C., Dunkeld, 1 November 2026 -
Measured mine on the A9 lay-by. 14 inches. I’ve had shorter holidays.
— Stuart L., Bankfoot, 1 November 2026
Write to the Editor