Rannoch
Moor of Rannoch Restaurant & Rooms
Introduction
The Moor of Rannoch is about as far from anywhere as a restaurant gets in Scotland. It stands next to Rannoch Station, on the edge of Rannoch Moor, with no village to speak of around it. Just the railway, the moor, and weather that changes by the hour. Scott and Steph run it, and have done for years now.
Dinner is the reason to come. The menu changes every day, built around what's fresh and what's local, with a fair bit foraged from the moor itself. You get three starters, four mains and three desserts to choose from, and the price takes in tea or coffee and a Scottish cheese board at the end. Modern cooking, but not fussy with it. Destination dining, in the least likely spot for it.
The bar is the other draw. More than a hundred malt whiskies, a good run of Scottish gins, and someone happy to talk you through them. There's a log-burner, a communal jigsaw on the go, and no phone signal to interrupt any of it.
If you want to stay, there are five en-suite rooms upstairs, all looking out over the moor and the station. Most people arrive by train on the West Highland Line. Some come up on the sleeper from London, which is a fine way to do it.
Location
The Moor of Rannoch sits beside Rannoch Station, in highland Perthshire, a short walk from the platform on the West Highland Railway Line. It's roughly an hour's drive west of Pitlochry, the last stretch a single-track road across the moor with passing places, or about 20 miles along the loch from Kinloch Rannoch. The road ends at the station, so you don't pass through on the way to anywhere. You go there on purpose.
What's nearby
The moor itself is the main event. Rannoch Moor is one of the largest stretches of wild bog and lochan in Britain, around 50 square miles of it, ringed by mountains. There are walks straight from the door, including the path along Loch Laidon with its small beach. Wildlife is everywhere, red deer, birds of prey, the lot.
The railway is part of the appeal. The West Highland Line runs north to Corrour, the next stop and the highest mainline station in Britain, with no public road to it at all. Plenty of people walk the stretch from Rannoch to Corrour and catch the train back. South, the line heads down towards Bridge of Orchy and on to Glasgow.
Kinloch Rannoch is the nearest village, at the east end of Loch Rannoch, with a shop and a couple of places to eat. Schiehallion, the cone-shaped Munro used in a famous 18th-century experiment to weigh the Earth, rises just to the south.
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