Gorge of Killiecrankie

The Pass of Killiecrankie is where the Highlands narrow to a bottleneck. The River Garry runs through a steep wooded gorge with the road and railway squeezed in above it, and for centuries everything moving between north and south came this way. On 27 July 1689 that included two armies. The first Jacobite rising met government forces here, and the Highland charge led by John Graham of Claverhouse, Bonnie Dundee, broke General Mackay's line in minutes in one of the bloodiest engagements of the era. Dundee took a musket ball in his moment of victory and died of it, and the rising faltered within a month at Dunkeld.

The battle left the gorge its best-known landmark. A government soldier named Donald MacBean, fleeing the rout, jumped 18 feet across the Garry where the river funnels between rocks, and Soldier's Leap has been drawing visitors to peer at the gap ever since. Fifteen minutes' walk from the car park, down steep and uneven steps, and once you've seen the water below you'll understand what a man will do with Highlanders behind him.

The rest of the visit is gentler. The National Trust for Scotland cares for the gorge, an SSSI whose oak-lined slopes hold red squirrels, pine martens, woodpeckers and a noted crop of rare fungi, with a wildlife feeding station by the visitor centre for guaranteed sightings. The centre has an exhibition on the battle, a shop, toilets and an independently run café and patisserie, and dogs are welcome throughout. From Soldier's Leap the riverside path carries on to the green footbridge in about 30 minutes, crossing to the Linn of Tummel or continuing three miles down the Garry to Pitlochry. Come in October if you can. The pass is one of the finest autumn woodlands in Scotland, and the trees between the viewpoints do things that make the battle story wait its turn.