Scotland · Loch Ness and Glen Affric

A 132 km loop from Drumnadrochit

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Why this ride

Water, forest and Highland atmosphere without chasing a postcard queue. Out of Drumnadrochit and back again: 132 km, roughly 2 h 17 in the saddle. The stops in between: Loch Ness view, Glen Affric forest core and Beauly. Back roads rather than main roads, where the map allows.

Roadbook

1. Drumnadrochit fuel gate fuel

   Drumnadrochit is the village that Loch Ness made famous, and it is a place that has learned to live with its monster. It sits on the north-west shore, where Glen Urquhart opens out from the hills and meets the loch, about twenty kilometres from Inverness along the A82. The village has the practical things a rider needs, including fuel, shops, cafes and pubs, along with a couple of exhibitions devoted to Nessie, which treat the subject with varying amounts of seriousness. The first recorded report of a creature in the river Ness comes from a biography of St Columba written in the seventh century, which describes him telling a monster to turn back, and the modern fascination dates from the 1930s.

   The loch is the real draw, and it is enormous. Loch Ness is about thirty-seven kilometres long and holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, with a depth of over two hundred metres in places. The water is dark with peat, which is why you can see nothing beneath the surface. A mile or two south of the village stand the ruins of Urquhart Castle, on a rocky headland above the water. It was fought over in the wars between Scotland and England, and in the end blown up by its own garrison in 1692 to keep it from Jacobite hands. It makes one of the most photographed ruins in Scotland.

   The riding from here has options. The A82 along the loch is wide and quick but busy in summer with coaches, caravans and camper vans, so patience is useful. A better choice is to turn off west on the A831 to Cannich and onward to Glen Affric, a long glen of pine forest, lochs and mountains that many call the most beautiful in Scotland. The road narrows and twists, passing through remnants of the old Caledonian forest, and there are red deer, red squirrels and, with luck, golden eagles overhead. The surface is mostly good but narrow, with passing places on the upper sections.

   Weather is quick to change, and a mild morning can become a cold wet afternoon without much warning. Midges are a fact of life from midsummer into early autumn, so carry a repellent. Beauly and Muir of Ord, a short ride north-east, have more shops and fuel, while Inverness has everything.

   For a coffee, the village offers several options, and an early start gets you ahead of the coach tours.

2. Loch Ness view photo

   Loch Ness is a long way from the postcard idea of a quiet Highland lake. It is a slot in the earth, about thirty-six kilometres of dark water lying along the Great Glen fault, and it is deep enough, over two hundred metres at its worst, that it holds more water than every lake in England and Wales put together. Standing above it near Drumnadrochit, you feel the scale of it more than you see it: the far shore is steep, forested and close, and the water has the colour of strong tea because of the peat washed down from the hills.

   The A82 along the north-west shore is the road you ride here, and it is better than its reputation among tourists in hire cars. It is wide for the Highlands, with decent sightlines, a few fast sweepers and a handful of tight spots where the loch hugs the tarmac. The trouble is traffic. In summer the coaches, caravans and monster-hunters crawl between Fort Augustus and Inverness, so go early in the morning or late in the evening, when the light along the water is lovely and the road is yours. Wind funnels down the glen, usually from the south-west, and can push a loaded bike around on the open stretches.

   The history sits mostly a few minutes away at Urquhart Castle, a ruin on a promontory that was blown up in 1692 so the Jacobites could not use it. Older still is the story of Saint Columba, who in the sixth century is said to have faced down a water beast in the River Ness, recorded by his biographer Adomnán. The modern monster industry came much later, in the 1930s, but the loch has never quite shaken it off, and every second shop in Drumnadrochit sells a plush version. Nobody has found anything. The Caledonian Canal, stitched through the glen by Thomas Telford in the early nineteenth century, is the quieter marvel.

   For practical matters, Drumnadrochit is a village of about a thousand people and has the basics, including somewhere to eat and a petrol station, but it is the sort of place that fills up fast in the season, so do not leave fuel to chance. Inverness, twenty-odd kilometres away, is the proper town for everything else. Midges are real here from late spring to early autumn, mostly at dusk and in still air, so a viewpoint stop is best done with the visor half down and the engine ready.

3. Glen Affric forest core scenic

   The tarmac ends, and in a sense so does the modern Highlands. Glen Affric is reached by a single-track road that climbs west from Cannich, through Strathglass, and gives up a few kilometres past the lochs, and that dead end is exactly why the glen has stayed so intact. People who know Scotland well tend to name it as the finest glen in the country, and it is hard to argue once you are in the middle of it, among old pine trees with Loch Affric and its islands lying in front of you.

   What you are looking at is a remnant of the Caledonian forest, the Scots pine woodland that once covered much of the Highlands before felling, grazing and burning pushed it back into a few strongholds. Some of the trees here are centuries old, wide and twisted, with orange bark that glows when the sun is low. Birch, rowan and juniper fill the gaps. Red deer move through the hillsides, golden eagles hunt the ridges, and the shy residents, red squirrels, pine martens and capercaillie, are the ones most visitors never see. Conservation groups have spent decades fencing, planting and letting the forest regenerate, and you can see the young trees coming up.

   On a bike, the road is slow by necessity. It is narrow, with passing places that you actually need to use, plenty of blind rises and the occasional cyclist, walker or sheep. The surface is generally good but patched, and in places the pines shade it so it stays damp long after the rest of the glen has dried. That suits the pace. Take it gently, stop at the car parks, switch off the engine and listen; in the middle of the day the loudest sound is often the wind in the needles. Autumn, with golden birches and bracken the colour of rust, is when the glen is at its best, and it is also when the midges finally relent.

   The nearest proper services are back toward Drumnadrochit or on the road to Inverness. The dams and hydro works in the upper glen are a reminder that this wilderness has been engineered more than it looks, but the effect is mild, and the landscape wins.

4. Beauly food stop food

   Beauly is pronounced Bew-lee, which tells you something about the layers of language in this part of Scotland. The name is said to come from the French beau lieu, a beautiful place, supposedly an exclamation of Mary, Queen of Scots when she visited in the sixteenth century, though the monks who founded the priory in 1230 had already given it the name. Whatever the truth, the ruined priory still stands beside the main street, a red sandstone shell with traceable arches and a quiet graveyard, and it is worth ten minutes before you eat.

   The town itself is small, about fourteen hundred people, built around a broad market square with a tall statue at one end and a row of dignified old buildings around it. It sits on the Beauly Firth, at the point where the river runs out of Strathglass into the sea, and the farmland around it is low and fertile, quite unlike the mountains you have just been riding. That contrast is a good reason to stop here at the end of a day in Glen Affric or on the way in from the Black Isle. Beauly has been a dependable place for lunch for as long as riders have been coming this way, with bakeries, cafes and a couple of pubs within a hundred metres of the square, and the shops are the sort that sell tweed, whisky and good oatcakes rather than souvenirs.

   The roads around it are gentle. The A862 runs east toward Inverness along the firth, flat and fairly quick, and the road west toward Kiltarlity and Drumnadrochit climbs into forests and turns more interesting, with good surfaces, moderate gradients and a series of long bends. The valley carries a surprising amount of farm traffic, so pay attention at the junctions. Weather here comes off the Moray Firth and is often drier than the west, and in autumn the light across the firth is some of the best in the Highlands.

   For fuel, Muir of Ord is four kilometres away and has a few thousand people, which is plenty to guarantee a pump; Dingwall, a bit further, is a proper market town with more options. Beauly itself is for sitting down, a pot of tea and a decent sandwich, before you take the road toward the loch.

5. Back to Drumnadrochit finish

   Back at Drumnadrochit. That is the ride.

Where this sits

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