- clashing swords and moody dramas

Blackness Castle sits on the edge of the Forth estuary, looking every inch a fortress (though some say it also looks like a moored warship). Its dramatic battlements have attracted a variety of film-makers, inevitably those seeking the atmosphere of large-scale dramas - for example, the version of Macbeth (1997) which featured Jason Connery and Helen Baxendale.

Continuing the Shakespearian theme, Franco Zeffirelli had previously used Blackness Castle in his Hamlet (1990), with Mel Gibson in the title role and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia.

Another often filmed classic, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, also used Blackness Castle, when it was filmed as a TV mini-series in 1997. (This is the one with Christopher Lee in it.)

Appropriately, given the proximity of the real events in 14th century Scotland, Blackness Castle also turns up in The Bruce (1996) which tells the story of the road to independence under King Robert the Bruce. This one has Brian Blessed as King Edward I of England.

Elsewhere, several scenes of Young Adam (2003), dark and brooding, and featuring Scotland's own Ewen MacGregor and Tilda Swinton, were filmed along the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal, as well as Grangemouth, these locations crucial to the story of the happenings on board a canal barge.

Much lighter in tone, the wide-open spaces of Sheriffmuir on the gentle northern slopes of the Ochil Hills were used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) for the final battle scene, with extras played by students from the University of Stirling!