Invermoriston

Old Stone, White Water

The old bridge over the River Moriston is now bypassed. Its two unequal arches spring from bare rock, one spanning about sixty feet and the other forty-five, and beneath them the water breaks white over the falls. People call it the Telford Bridge, and Thomas Telford's Highland road of 1808 to 1811 did eventually run across it, though the rubble structure itself is older, mid-eighteenth-century work that Telford's engineers absorbed into their line. The parapet you lean on to watch the water was rebuilt in 1984.

This is where the River Moriston reaches Loch Ness, at the point the Great Glen meets the wooded side-valley of Glenmoriston running west. Forested slopes close in around the village, and higher up there is open moorland along the Great Glen Way, the 79-mile route that threads canal towpaths, forest tracks and roads the length of the glen. Many people who stop here are walking some part of it.

Pathside Food and Drink

For breakfast or a mid-walk stop, Glen Rowan Cafe sits close to the loch and serves speciality coffee, homemade cake and a full Scottish breakfast with Stornoway black pudding, alongside smoked salmon with scrambled eggs and vegetarian and vegan versions. PeachieNess is a small gift and takeaway shop for locally made gifts, Scottish alcohol, local coffee and Monster Bite sandwiches on oversized rolls made for the shop.

A small village shop with a post office is another practical stop for visitors moving through Invermoriston.

Church, Well and Memory

The parish church was built in 1913 in Gothic form and endowed by Harriet Morrison in memory of her husband Frank. It has harled walls, a square crenellated tower whose clock faces are blind, and a hammer-beam timber roof over an octagonal pulpit; the Grant family, lairds of Glenmoriston, are remembered in mural memorials inside. A joint service is held here on the first Sunday of each month.

Older still is St Columba's Well, tied by tradition to the saint's sixth-century journey to King Bridei and long believed to cure. In the burial ground nearby, a stone from 1848 was raised by Peter McLeod for his father Finlay, Piper to Glenmoriston.

Hidden History and Woodland Trails

The glen keeps a harder memory too. After Culloden in 1746, seven local men hid Charles Edward Stuart for about a month under their leader Patrick Grant of Crasky. They could have turned him in for a reward of thirty thousand pounds, and instead obtained gingerbread for him.

Short walks fan out from the falls: the Falls Wood path follows the river up to a summer house set above the water, and the Glenmoriston Beastie Trail sends families around the glen collecting brass rubbings of twelve animals. Six miles west at Dundreggan, a rewilding centre offers everything from the level 916-metre Juniper Path to the steep four-kilometre Heather Path through regenerating woodland.

Arrival Along the Great Glen

Inverness and its railway station are about thirty miles north up the A82, the same road that brings the Citylink coaches and the 312 bus past the village. But walkers step off the path to find the bridge and the sound of the water running under it.