Stirling scotland

The Castle and a walk to the National Wallace Monument plus lunch will fill a day.

The Falkirk Wheel is not far away.
https://www.scottishcanals.co.uk/falkirk-wheel/

There is also Stirling Old Town Jail which gets very positive reviews on Trip Advisor.

The Church of the Holy Rude is also worth popping into but it is only open 1st May - 30th September.

I don’t know when you are going, but I was there in January and the Falkirk Wheel was closed for maintenance for weeks - nothing mentioned about this on its website. The Kelpies in Falkirk were open.

We enjoyed Stirling Castle far more than Edinburgh Castle. While Edinburgh had a military slant to its displays, Stirling focused more on Royal history which was more to our liking. We spent about 5 hours there and didn't end up seeing anything else on our daytrip from Glasgow.

Just next to the castle is the 15th century Holy Rude church (where the infant son of Mary Queen of Scots was crowned James VI) which another person here mentioned, with a lovely ruined 16th century house immediately adjacent (Mar's Wark) and the cemetery that makes for a nice visit just behind the church. All of this is free and relatively unpromoted (at least compared to the castle). We enjoyed the castle but it was busy and these few "lesser" nearby sights felt more enjoyable because they were basically all ours on a Monday afternoon in June. Stirling is lovely overall and well worth the journey as a day trip from either Glasgow or Edinburgh - we would have stayed the night if we'd had a little extra time.

Stirling Castle was very very enjoyable. We took a guided tour that's free... it was terrific. There's also a sandwich place there that's reasonable if you don't want to pack your own

The Wallace Monument - meh. From afar -- the ramparts at the castle -- it called to us. When we got there, it was a busy signal. If you go and don't like hiking up you can take the free tram. The hike is nice.

We stopped at the Kelpies on the way to Stirling from Edinburgh. I had zero anticipation of the visit. I thoroughly enjoyed the stop, much to my surprise. Whether you like art or engineering, this meets your expectations.

We also stopped at the site of the Battle of Bonnuckburn at the end of the day. It was a quiet, peaceful (ironic given the battle there centuries ago) place. To me it felt like some of the Civil War battle sites we've visited.