Tomich

The Retriever and the Model Village

A life-size bronze golden retriever stands in the middle of Tomich, and it is not there for decoration. The breed began on the estate above the village. In 1868 Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, who owned Guisachan, mated a wavy-coated retriever with a Tweed Water Spaniel, and their three pups founded the line. A second marker tells the story out by the ruined mansion; the bronze stands among the stone cottages, as though it still lives here.

The cottages are the point of the place. Tomich is a stone-built conservation village at the upper end of Strathglass, where the road begins its climb toward Glen Affric and the hills close in on either side. Marjoribanks built it in the 1850s as a model village, moving his estate tenants down from their crofts and giving them twenty-five houses along with a school, a church, a post office, a shop and a garage. Several of those buildings survive, repurposed for other uses today.

Café, Hotel and Village Provisions

The Coach House Café serves snacks in Tomich. From the village, Plodda Falls lies another five miles along a narrow road and forest track; its trailhead has a picnic area.

The Tomich Hotel began as accommodation for the Guisachan estate's stalkers and keepers and later became a Victorian country hotel. It is undergoing a full renovation, so make other plans for a meal or drink. On Main Street in nearby Cannich, the family-run Cannich Stores stocks groceries, beverages and daily essentials.

The Plodda Falls Circuit

What you come here to walk is Plodda Falls, five miles beyond the village at the end of a single-track road and then a forest track. The waymarked circuit is about a mile and a half, an hour or so on rugged paths with steps and steep sections, dropping through tall Douglas firs to the foot of a waterfall of more than forty metres and back up to the cantilevered lip at the top. Lord Tweedmouth planted those firs and built the carriage drive; timber from the same woods went into the masts of Captain Scott's Discovery. There is paid parking and picnic space at the trailhead, no bus, and very little phone signal once you are in the glen.

Guisachan House in Ruins

Closer to home, a narrow lane of just over a kilometre reaches the fenced ruins of Guisachan House itself. The grounds are accessible, but livestock graze them and dogs should stay on the lead. The house once entertained the future George V, Churchill and Gladstone, and its drawing room had Wedgwood Jasperware set into the chimneypiece and walls. Lady Islington bought it in 1939, objected to the National Fitness Campaign training centre then using it, and had it stripped and unroofed; it deteriorated into the present ruin.

Reaching Tomich

Getting here means the A831 from Drumnadrochit toward Cannich and then the signed minor road; Beauly is the nearest railhead, with the request bus to Beauly Square running Tuesdays and Saturdays if you email the day before. Marjoribanks was once asked what made him buy the estate. "Simply the game," he said. The retriever in the street is what the game left behind.