Qualla: Loch Maree

Loch Maree: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alfred de Breanski, Public domain. Eilean Sùbhainn is the largest island in Loch Maree. On Eilean Sùbhainn, there is a small loch. In that loch, there is an island. It is the only place in Great Britain where you can find an island inside a lake inside an island inside a lake. Loch Maree, the 13-mile freshwater loch in Wester Ross that holds this Russian-doll arrangement, contains 66 islands in total. The ratio of island surface to water surface is greater than any other large loch in Scotland. And it is named for an 8th-century Irish saint who built a hermitage on one of those islands and was so thoroughly remembered that he changed the name of the water itself.

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Image: Alfred de Breanski | Public domain

Loch Maree: The Saint Who Renamed the Loch

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit eLaboureur from F-12510 OLEMPS, CC BY 2.0. Before the late seventh century, this body of water was called Loch Ewe. The village at its eastern end is still called Kinlochewe - Head of Loch Ewe - a fossil of that older name. Sometime between 671 and 722, an Irish monk named Maol Rubha left the great Celtic Church centre at...

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Image: eLaboureur from F-12510 OLEMPS | CC BY 2.0

Loch Maree: Three Basins, Sixty-Six Islands

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. The loch is divided geologically into three deep basins. The Grudie Basin in the south-east, 367 feet at its deepest, lies between Isle Maree and the head of the loch. The Slattadale Basin north-west of it holds most of the islands. The Ardlair Basin, the most irregularly shaped ...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Loch Maree: Iron and Charcoal

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Upson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Loch Maree looks remote and timeless now, but for one extraordinary period in the seventeenth century it was an industrial site. The Letterewe ironworks on the north-east shore smelted bog iron using charcoal from the local oak woods. Records suggest as much as eight hectares of ...

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Image: Chris Upson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch Maree: Queen Victoria's Loch

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Upson, CC BY-SA 2.0. In September 1877, Queen Victoria came to stay at the Loch Maree Hotel at Talladale. She walked, she fished, she visited Isle Maree and hammered a coin into the wish tree there, and she wrote about the experience in her diary. When her diaries were published, Loch Maree became on...

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Image: Chris Upson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch Maree: The View From Above

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Knapton at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air, Loch Maree is one of the most photographed sights in the Highlands. The water threads thirteen miles north-west to south-east. On the south side, Beinn Eighe rises - white-capped quartzite even in summer, a peak so distinctive it gave its name to Britain's first Nat...

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Image: Mick Knapton at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0