Corrimony – A 4,000-Year-Old Cairn Ringed by Standing Stones
A few hours.
The route
Corrimony is a beautifully kept burial cairn about 4,000 years old, a low mound of stones in a ring of standing stones among the birches and fields of upper Glen Urquhart.
Lunch afterwards is down the glen at Fiddler's, the whisky bar and restaurant on the green in Drumnadrochit.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
Book lunch at Fiddler's Highland Restaurant, Drumnadrochit
Book a table for lunch at Fiddler's Highland Restaurant, Drumnadrochit, on 01456 450678 or at bookings@fiddledrum.co.uk: reservations are recommended, especially during the summer months, and for a table the same day it prefers a phone call.
The day
Corrimony
A quiet morning among the standing stones at Corrimony, then a warm lunch on the village green in Drumnadrochit.
About two and a half hours
Corrimony Chambered Cairn
An attraction
The cairn is signposted off the A831 between Cannich and Glen Urquhart, and there's a small car park, open every day, about 100 yards from the stones. It's a Clava cairn, the kind found only in the Highlands: a low round mound of water-worn stones, edged by a kerb, inside its ring of standing stones. Unlike the cairns at Clava, much of its passage roof survives, and the passage is about a metre high, so you can stoop or crawl right into the burial chamber at its heart. A big slab carved with cup marks is thought to be the chamber's original capstone, and when the chamber was dug in the 1950s, signs of a single crouched burial were found under its floor. Allow half an hour to three-quarters; it's free, and the nearest toilets are at Cannich Village Hall, about five miles away. The RSPB's Corrimony reserve shares the car park, with an 8.5-mile waymarked trail across the moor for a longer day.
18 min by car
Fiddler's Highland Restaurant, Drumnadrochit
Lunch
It's 18 minutes' drive east down Glen Urquhart to Drumnadrochit, where Fiddler's stands on the village green. Lunch is served every day from 12.30pm to 2.30pm: the house haggis, hearty casseroles, Great Glen venison and char-grilled steaks, with over 500 whiskies in the bar for whoever isn't driving.
If it rains
The cairn stands in open fields with no shelter. In heavy rain keep the visit short and go on to Fiddler's, where lunch is indoors.
Make it a weekend
More days out near Inverness.
Photographs by Giulio Fecchio, Craig Cockburn and KC Fan via Google
Maps from OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors; heights from Mapzen's terrain tiles.