ACTIVE OUTDOORS: Sky high feeling on Beinn Eighe Mountain Trail

Published: 18:30, 24 July 2023

A rainbow appears over the woodland below, with Slioch in the background.

We’re in the sky! It was a fair assessment of our situation from an astute five-year-old, who had spent the last hour or two clambering his way up a steep, rocky path from close to sea level.

Looking back across Loch Maree, the mighty Slioch didn’t seem to rise that much higher than us, and with the cloud clinging to the forested slopes below, it certainly felt like we were in another world.

Then, on a day of heavy showers and bursts of sunshine, a rainbow appeared above the trees – but well below where we were standing, admiring the view.

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The Beinn Eighe Mountain Trail certainly provided us with some memorable moments. This is no walk in the park, though, rising to around 550 metres above sea level on some rough and challenging mountain paths.

My challenge had been to negotiate it single-handedly with my three children, some of whom were more enthusiastic than others about the walk at first!

The girls head on, with the Corbett of Meall a’ Ghiuthais in the view ahead.

A very wet lunch stop early on didn’t help, as we all got a good soaking while trying to don waterproofs and eat a soggy sandwich as we were getting nibbled by midges. The forecast was for showers and sunny spells, so I maintained that we would soon dry off once we got going again – which, eventually, we did.

After an earlier visit to the Beinn Eighe Visitor Centre, we headed a couple of kilometres further west to the Coille na Glas-Leitire car park, where the mountain and woodland trails start. This is a beautiful spot on the shore of Loch Maree, and there is lots of information about the area and the walks available here.

Both trails begin by following a path under the road then reaching a footbridge, where we kept straight ahead on the path beside the burn rather than crossing the bridge. This is the start of the mountain trail, which begins by climbing up through this ancient woodland.

Beinn Eighe is Britain’s oldest national nature reserve, established in 1951, and it is the first place that taller vegetation such as birches and juniper grew after the last ice age 11,500 years ago. The Scots pines started to grow more than 9000 years ago, and make a dramatic sight in the changing weather here.

After lunch we continued to climb higher, crossing a small bridge before a much rockier section that in places involves some hands-on scrambling and a bit of concentration to follow the cairns that mark the route.

Matthew gets hands on as he leads the way.

There are steep drops in places and I spent my time with Matthew, my youngest, holding his hands or helping him up the bigger steps. To be fair, his enthusiasm and energy kept him going and he was no bother as he made his way up confidently and excitedly.

It did mean we had to allow plenty of time for the walk, however. The official recommendation is to allow four to five hours to complete the walk, and in the end it took us six hours and 15 minutes – not a bad effort for short legs, I would say!

The older girls felt the slow pace as it took a long time up the rocky steps to finally reach the conservation cairn that marks the summit of the trail. But the mood, as well as the weather, changed here, and we enjoyed more sunshine from this point on.

This is one of those rare mountain walks where it really is pretty much all downhill from the top, so it was with a lighter step that Clara and Jennifer made for Loch Allt an Dairaich – the loch of the burn of the oaks – enjoying the spectacular view to Beinn Eighe itself from the clear path. Matthew and I plodded on behind, taking extra care of the pitched steps going downhill.

We caught up at the Lunar Loch, named to commemorate the 1969 moon landing, where we stopped to share a flask of hot chocolate and grab a snack before the long descent to Loch Maree.

Beinn Eighe seen from lochans shortly after the summit cairn.

A pitched path leads the way above a steep-sided gorge, with one or two easy burn crossings – easy for those of us with long legs, at least. Extra care is needed above the gorge, particularly as it passes the lone pine close to a sheer drop, which is fenced and marked with a warning sign.

Even from here, the loch looks a long way off. We stopped for a brief rest at the Ice Age cairn, which is beside a rock scratched with debris from a glacier that would have been as high as Slioch. You can see the marks all running in the direction the glacier would have travelled in as this deep glen was scoured and shaped by the ice.

Soon we were back at the edge of the trees, the forest of the grey slope (Coille na Glas-Leitire), and we dropped down to the path junction with the woodland trail. A signpost suggests following the trail left, but it’s a little shorter to turn right here for a more direct return, so I was kind to the youngsters and opted for that way.

A series of benches along here made for great viewpoints, and Jennifer and Matthew were playing happily, stopping at each one, while Clara was using the map to measure the distance left to go.

They’d all completed something that earlier in the day had seemed nigh-on impossible to them, and dare I say it, even had fun in the process.