The bar in Cannich is a double-decker bus. It began in 2000 as an Alexander ALX400-bodied DAF, ran for Arriva London out of Croydon, later worked from Edmonton, and finished on school services in July 2023 before its owners bought it and parked it beside Cannich Stores. The Affric Bar & Cafe operates from inside it. Food is takeaway, eaten on the outdoor terrace: house-made pies, sausage rolls and burger patties, the eggs from Invercannich Farm a mile away, the meat from John M Munro in Beauly. What comes out of the taps includes organic beers from Black Isle Brewery and others from Dog Falls Brewery, and the bar bottles its own single-cask single malt, the Affric Trail.
Cannich Stores, which the bar adjoins, is the practical centre of the place. It is family-run and licensed, a VisitScotland Information Partner, and it supplies not just Cannich but the scattered communities around it at Tomich, Cougie and Struy. Alongside the groceries you can buy whisky, maps and guides, books, toys, newspapers, Flogas, coal and salt. In a village this size a shop that stocks both coal and single malt is doing most of the work.
There used to be a second option, the Slaters Arms, which took anglers, cyclists, bikers and campsite guests and kept instruments about for impromptu sessions. It closed on the first day of 2025 and is now a house, so do not arrive expecting it.
The village sits where the River Cannich meets the River Affric, the two joining just east to form the River Glass. This is the head of Strathglass and the way into Glen Affric, and Cannich reads as a working forest-and-river gateway rather than a preserved stone showpiece: sandstone-faced housing, playing fields, open grass and wooded slopes, with the glens beginning at the edge of it.
Most people are here to walk. The Dog Falls Trail is a strenuous two miles that follows the River Affric to a deep gorge — uneven gravel, steps, a narrow bridge and two road crossings — in about an hour and a quarter, though you can turn back at the falls in thirty minutes. Forestry and Land Scotland describes the water there as "whisky-coloured water rushing through the canyon." The longer Coire Loch Trail climbs through ancient pine and birch to a hidden lochan where water lilies sit in summer and dragonflies work the surface. The Affric Kintail Way runs west from the village all the way to Morvich, some forty-four miles; its first stage arrives here from Drumnadrochit over the hills.
You reach Cannich on the A831, about ten miles from Drumnadrochit and the A82, or from Beauly the other way. Beauly has the nearest railway station, unstaffed with a free car park and step-free platforms. Bus service 48 calls at MacColl Road, but only on Fridays.
The village exists in its present form because of the hydro. In the late 1940s the Mullardoch–Fasnakyle–Affric scheme made this its main camp, housing around two thousand workers in Nissen huts with a canteen, sick bay, store and post office. MacColl Road is named for Sir Edward MacColl of the Hydro Board; one Nissen hut still stands. The Strathglass Shinty Club, the "Grand Old Club," has played near here for close to 150 years, through Clearances, forestry and hydro alike.
And a little way toward Tomich, at Guisachan in 1868, Lord Tweedmouth bred a Wavy-coated Retriever named Nous with a Tweed Water Spaniel named Belle. Their three puppies were Primrose, Cowslip and Crocus, founders of the line that became the Golden Retriever.