Qualla: River Feshie

River Feshie: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit sylvia duckworth, CC BY-SA 2.0. The river ran the wrong way once. The River Feshie begins its life flowing eastward out of the Glenfeshie Forest, headed for the Dee — until the slow geological theft known as stream capture pulled the Geldie Burn into its system, and the whole flow turned sharply northwest down into Glen Feshie instead. From there it tumbles through a wooded glen so geologically active that the river constantly braids itself into multiple channels across its own gravel beds, scouring new lines each spring, abandoning others, never holding still. It gathers burns from the Cairngorm plateau on its right, the Allt Chomhraig from the left at Balachroick, and after slipping under the B970 at Feshiebridge it joins the Spey at Kincraig — a major tributary in the Spey system, named, in the Gaelic, for boggy ground and pasture.

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Image: sylvia duckworth | CC BY-SA 2.0

River Feshie: The Glen's Long Lease

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F Leask, CC BY-SA 2.0. The glen has belonged to many people. The east side was Mackintosh land for centuries — the clan whose chief, Aeneas Mackintosh, leased timber rights at Ruigh Aiteachain to the Glen Feshie Wood Company in the late 18th century, when Scottish pinewoods were being felled at industr...

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Image: F Leask | CC BY-SA 2.0

River Feshie: From Sheep to Deer

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Bedford family arrived in 1818. Georgiana Russell, the Duchess of Bedford, leased the Invereshie shootings from Macpherson Grant and began what would be a decades-long sporting association with the glen — a fashionable English aristocratic family adopting a Highland landscape...

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Image: Gordon Brown | CC BY-SA 2.0

River Feshie: The Danish Owner's Rewilding

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 2006, Anders Holch Povlsen, the Danish founder of the Bestseller clothing empire and one of Europe's largest private landowners, bought the Glen Feshie estate. He soon added the neighbouring 4,000-acre Killiehuntly farm. Povlsen's intent in Glen Feshie has been deliberately th...

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Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0