Day out at Glen Affric.

Sunday dawned with a beautiful crisp clear blue sky as forecast so we packed a picnic and drove to Glen Affric via Inverness, alongside the Beauly Firth and turned off down Strathglass to the village of Cannich. From here we followed a single track road passing through amazing scenery and looking down on deep river gorges for about 8 miles to the car park at the end of Glen Affric. Had a lovely relaxing walk by the river and into one of the oldest Caledonian Forests in Scotland where we were very fortunate to see a male and female Scottish Crossbill, the only truly native species of the UK and a bird confined only to the Highlands of Scotland....our first exciting sighting of this quite elusive bird. 

The scenery all around us was just stunning with snow on the mountain tops and the River Affric was gushing along after all the recent rain. After our walk we drove back along the road for a few miles to a new picnic site we had spotted earlier and enjoyed our lunch beside a very peaceful loch. This day trip is about 55 miles from Aspenwood Cottage on Loch Ness and took us about one and a half hours to get to Glen Affric on a very pleasant run. So sit back and enjoy some of the scenes we saw.....