Laggan

Laggan Bridge and the upper Spey

At Laggan Bridge, where the A86 meets the Gergask road, the Laggan Coffee Bothy sits opposite the parish church, doing a trade in breakfast rolls, soup, sandwiches, paninis and Mackie's ice cream. It is licensed, so you can pick up wine, local beer or gin along with your coffee, and there is a log burner inside and seating out. The owners are clear about one thing: this is not a convenience shop. The nearest groceries are the Co-op in Newtonmore, eight miles east, so plan the big shop before you arrive.

The village runs to a little over 320 people in about a hundred households, strung along the upper Spey some ten miles from the river's source, with the Monadhliath and Cairngorm hills on either side and the road running west towards Loch Laggan. The nearest railway station is at Newtonmore, seven miles east, though it is unstaffed and has no ticket machine. Buses stop at Laggan Bridge, but they run seldom enough that it is worth checking the day's timetable before you count on one.

Two wheels, forest paths and falls

A mile and three-quarters west on the A86 is Laggan Wolftrax, a mountain-bike centre run as a social enterprise by the local forest trust. The trails are graded from the 3.5-kilometre Wolf Cub Green, made for children and beginners, up through blue and red routes to the 3.9-kilometre Wolf of Badenoch Black, which throws in rock features, drop-offs, stone staircases, boulder fields and slabs. The sections carry names like Blaeberry Flapjack, Slaba-Dabba-Doo, The Pict, Howlin' Wolf and Rib Rattler. The centre has a café, public toilets, coin-operated showers, a small bike shop and bike hire.

You do not need a bike to use the forest. The Spruce & Squirrel Trail is a moderate 1.25-mile trail through pine and spruce where nibbled cones give away the red squirrels; the Gorstean Trail is two miles of mostly wide firm gravel between car parks. The Druim an Aird Township Trail passes the abandoned remains of houses, barns and kilns. For something short, Lower Pattack Falls is 200 yards from the road, with a rougher half-mile loop over steps and narrow bridges for anyone who wants more. The falls turned up in Monarch of the Glen, which filmed around Ardverikie House and Loch Laggan nearby; the same country later stood in for The Crown and No Time to Die.

From the Pictish fort to the hotel bar

The long walk is the Dun da Lamh Trail, 4.5 strenuous miles from Wolftrax that climb, steeply and roughly at the end, to a late-prehistoric hillfort on Black Craig. The drystone wall is up to seven metres thick and still stands two and a half metres high, and it has never been excavated. From the top the view runs south-west to Loch Laggan, north-west to the Corrieyairack Pass and north-east to the Cairngorms. Forestry and Land Scotland call it "a view fit for a Pictish king." Someone built a corrugated-iron lookout into the fort walls during the Second World War, before the trees grew up and closed the sightlines.

The Laggan Hotel keeps a bar in the village proper, open to non-residents when there is room, with a conservatory that looks out at the mountains. Hares, rabbits and red squirrels turn up on the grass outside. The kitchen cooks Scottish dishes from neighbouring farms and local fishmongers; the bar pours Cairngorm lager from Aviemore, its own house-brewed Laggan Pilsner, and more than thirty malt whiskies.

The parish church and Anne Grant

The church across from the Coffee Bothy is grey-granite rubble, built in the 1780s and partially rebuilt, probably raised again, in the 1840s, and the village bought it outright in December 2024. Inside, galleries rest on eight pillars of local pine, and the pulpit was set high so the minister stood level with the local lairds: Cluny Macpherson's family faced him, with Glentruim's seats to the left. The entrance tiles were made in 1985 by Lynda Whitty and Mick Arnold of the nearby Caoldair Pottery.

Anne Grant married the minister in 1779 and learned Gaelic among his congregation. Widowed in 1801 with eight surviving children and a small pension, she published by subscription — more than 3,000 subscribers supported her 1803 volume — and her Letters from the Mountains set down the rural life of Laggan.

The Newfoundland foresters

In the churchyard are the graves of men from the Newfoundland Forestry Unit, who came to Laggan to fell timber during the Second World War.