Qualla: Glen Affric

Glen Affric: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 2019 a single elm tree in Glen Affric was named Scotland's Tree of the Year and given the nickname 'The Last Ent of Affric'. Around 1868 a Liberal MP named Dudley Marjoribanks bred the first golden retriever litter from a yellow wavy-coated dog named Nous and a Tweed water spaniel named Belle at his kennels near Guisachan House at the foot of the glen. In about 1500 someone in this valley wove a piece of tartan that fell into a peat bog and stayed there for four hundred years before researchers recovered it in the early 1980s and identified it as the oldest known true tartan in Scotland. None of those three facts feels at all out of place once you have stood in Glen Affric. This is a glen that collects strange survivals.

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glen Affric: The Granny Pines

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pic:Sourav Niyogi, (WT-en) P.K.Niyogi at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Glen Affric runs southwest from the village of Cannich, about fifteen miles west of Loch Ness. The River Affric flows along its length through Loch Affric and Loch Beinn a' Mheadhoin. The glen contains the third-largest remaining area of ancient Caledonian pinewood in Scotland - ...

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Image: Pic:Sourav Niyogi, (WT-en) P.K.Niyogi at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glen Affric: Bog-Preserved Tartan And A Birthday At Guisachan

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Postdlf, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Glen Affric tartan is a faded fragment of cloth, perhaps half a metre square, in greens and browns and reds and yellows. A walker found it in a peat bog near the glen in the early 1980s. Carbon-14 dating placed it between 1500 and 1600 AD, which makes it the oldest piece of t...

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Image: Postdlf | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glen Affric: Eight Munros And A Way Across The Country

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grinner, CC BY-SA 4.0. Glen Affric is the access route to some of the remotest mountains in Scotland. The north ridge holds eight Munros including Carn Eige at 1,183 metres - the highest peak north of the Great Glen. At the far western end of the ridge stand Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan, Mullach na Dheireag...

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Image: Grinner | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glen Affric: Wildcats, Capercaillies, And A National Park That Never Was

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0. After seventy years of restoration the biodiversity is returning. Glen Affric supports black grouse, capercaillie, crested tit and Scottish crossbill - all woodland birds of the old pine forests. Ospreys and golden eagles hunt over the open ground. Scottish wildcats, the rarest m...

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Image: Mike Pennington | CC BY-SA 2.0