Editing Strathaven (section)

==Culture==
[[File:Strathaven Balloon Festival 2018 2.JPG|thumb|Hot air balloon in flight over the town]]
Strathaven Hotel houses a small seated venue holding acoustic music gigs under the title [https://fretsconcerts.com/ FRETS]. Artists performing have included [[Arab Strap]], [[Norman Blake (Scottish musician)|Norman Blake]] and [[Euros Childs]], [[Lloyd Cole]], [[Altered Images]], [[Robyn Hitchcock]] and [[Michael Head (popular musician)|Michael Head]].

The town is host to Scotland's only hot air balloon festival. Held each August since 1999, the event attracts pilots and enthusiasts from across Europe.<ref>{{Cite web |title=About |url=https://www.strathavenballoonfestival.co.uk/about |access-date=2024-05-14 |website=www.strathavenballoonfestival.co.uk |language=en}}</ref>

In the Third Statistical Account of Scotland, County of Lanark, the Reverend C. Arthur Robertson, writing in 1953, quotes from the diary of a John McGowan, a native Strathavonian himself writing in Minnesota, U.S.A. c.1810 wherein is described some of Strathaven's folkloric history, "A small natural rock situated about a mile south of the town of Strathaven on the north bank of the [[Avon Water|River Avon]] in the parish of Avondale. Its curious form and romantic situation - with surrounding rocks rising abruptly and forming an amphitheatre about forty yards distant from it - give it the air of something grand and majestic. This little hill is covered with a slight coat of earth and planted with a few scotch firs, and the surrounding rocks are also covered with trees, forming a square on the north-east side of the Dabbie Dancie.

The hill itself is about 40 ft. high and 40 yds. long, is it oval form, within 30 yds. of the bed of the Avon, and was supposed to be the haunt of a [[Kelpie|water kelpy]] in the dark ages of romance, superstition and ignorance. The appearance of this beautiful little mount would give a stranger such ideas. This suggests to my mind the story which I heard in early life.

'On a stormy afternoon, as a cow-herd was gathering his cattle for home, he heard a voice more than human, just at the site of this old mount (the waters of the Avon were rising rapidly), call out, 'Carry me from Dabbie Dancie into Winkins Waas'. Which Winkin Waas is a rock placed on the other side of the Avon. This mount too, it is said, has the honour of Scots laws and ancient rites and superstitions delivered here by chiefs, and so public justice executed.'"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robertson |first=C. Arthur |title=The Third Statistical Account of Scotland: The County of Lanark |publisher=Collins |year=1960 |edition=1st |location=Glasgow |pages=463-464 |language=en}}</ref>