Things to do
in Lochaber.

It’s 20:05 in Lochaber.

Lochaber

E-bikes on Knoydart, drams at Lochy Bridge.

Lochaber is made for getting outdoors. On Knoydart, where there are almost no roads, you can hire an electric mountain bike in Inverie and ride out to Sandaig beach or the Folach waterfalls. The peninsula's own rangers lead guided walks through the woods and small trips to watch otters and seals. Long-distance walkers can set off from Fort William on organised trips along the West Highland, Great Glen or East Highland Ways. When the weather closes in, the distillery at the foot of Ben Nevis has tours and tastings. Bring waterproofs whatever the forecast says.

Knoydart Ranger Service→

The Great Glen Way by Thistle Trekking→

East Highland Way with Thistle Trekking→

Ben Nevis Distillery→

West Highland Way with Thistle Trekking→

Knoydart E-Bike Hire→

Place of the day19 hours ago

Ben Nevis Distillery.

A whisky distillery at the foot of Ben Nevis since 1825, with a visitor centre, tours and tastings.

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From the magazine18 hours ago

Issue 13Autumn / Winter 2026-27

Scotland's 26 mountain rescue teams are all volunteers, and between them they answered over 1,200 callouts in 2025.

Alice Varley has been a member of the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team for over six years, and like everyone in Scottish Mountain Rescue she gives her time for free. The teams are made up of teachers, health workers, engineers, outdoor guides, friends and parents, who leave offices, sports practices and family dinners within minutes when a call comes in, day or night. 'We are all volunteers, and we're all there because we love going out in the hills… we understand that no one sets out in the morning hoping to get rescued,' she says. Rescuers work without judgement, and the goal is always to get the casualty fit and eventually back out in the hills.

Read the full story in Issue 13

Book ahead17 hours ago

Fort WilliamBen Nevis DistilleryTour

LochaberKnoydart E-Bike HireTour

LochaberKnoydart Ranger ServiceTour

Book something for the weekend.

The tours and days that fill up: someone who knows the water, the hill or the city, booked before Friday.

See all the tours

Did you know16 hours ago

Corrour, on Rannoch Moor in the Highlands, is the highest mainline railway station in the UK, and no public road leads to it.

The station stands 410 metres above sea level on the West Highland Line, and it opened on 7 August 1894, first meant as little more than a passing place on the long stretch between Rannoch and Tulloch. The only way to drive there is a 15-mile private road from the A86. Corrour found fame in a scene from the film Trainspotting, and the old station house has been a bar and restaurant since 2015, with a youth hostel just over a mile away at the head of Loch Ossian.

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From our guide15 hours ago

Nevis Range Mountain Resort.

Seven miles from Fort William, on the slopes of Aonach Mòr, a mountain gondola lifts you from the glen to 650 metres in about fifteen minutes, with the views over Lochaber opening out the whole way up. At the top there are two short viewpoint walks and the Snowgoose Café for something warm. Mountain bikers come for the trails and the downhill World Cup track, and there's bike hire at the base. In winter, when the snow comes, the gondola carries skiers and snowboarders to the slopes. It's a fine way to get high without the climb.

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From the magazine15 hours ago

Issue 13Autumn / Winter 2026-27

The wildlife film-maker Gordon Buchanan, aged 54, calls himself the blink of a midge's eye beside Buachaille Etive Mòr in Glencoe, which formed around 420 million years ago.

Gordon has known and admired the mountain at the eastern end of Glencoe for more than three decades. Since the glaciers retreated around it, the Buachaille has watched the first hunter-gatherers arrive in Scotland around 14,000 years ago, then Neolithic farmers, the Picts and medieval kingdoms, and now droves of tourists with cameras. 'Mountains are indifferent to us. Maybe that is the appeal. They make us feel small and irrelevant and are a constant reminder that there are some things far, far bigger than us'. One day, he writes, ice, rain and time will wear it away, but for now it keeps watch over Scotland's wild heart.

Read the full story in Issue 13

Did you know14 hours ago

Glen Coe, in Lochaber, was the first place in the world where geologists recognised an ancient volcano that had collapsed in on itself.

About 420 million years ago a volcano erupted through the older rocks of the area, and the roof of its magma chamber gave way piece by piece along a ring of faults. In 1909 the geologists Clough, Maufe and Bailey described it in a paper called 'The Cauldron-Subsidence of Glen Coe', and the idea, now known as caldera collapse, was born. The sunken caldera measures about 13 kilometres by 8. Glaciers later carved its rocks into the corries and ridges of the glen, the Three Sisters among them, and near Stob Mhic Mhartuin you can put your hand on the fault itself.

See Three Sisters of Glencoe · Argyll and Bute

From Issue 3 of Hidden Scotland magazineIssue 313 hours ago

Turning Point: Traveller’s Tales to Cape Wrath

Photographer Richard Gaston's 240-mile walk from Fort William to Cape Wrath, two and a half weeks through glens, bogs and remote beaches to the north-west tip of the mainland.

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From our guide12 hours ago

The Lost Valley.

Hidden high among the Three Sisters, Coire Gabhail is where the MacDonalds of Glencoe kept the cattle they had rustled from their neighbours. From the road you would never guess it was there. The path climbs steeply from the A82 through a wooded gorge and a jumble of boulders, with a burn to cross on stepping stones, before the valley opens out, flat and green, between the cliffs. It's only about four kilometres there and back, but it's rough and rocky all the way. Turn back if the burn is in spate after rain.

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From the magazine11 hours ago

Issue 05Autumn / Winter 2022-23

A family in Morvern, in the Highlands, used to smear jam on their kitchen window so that a pine marten would come at dusk to lick it off.

Their cottage sits between an oakwood and a loch, and as the marten pressed close to the glass, the children of the house took turns to press their own noses quietly to the other side. Pine martens are about the size of a small cat, with chocolate-brown fur, a creamy yellow bib and a bushy tail that can be as long as the body. By the end of the 19th century they had vanished from most of Scotland, hanging on in parts of the remote northwest. In recent decades they have been spreading south and east again, and a little sweet food can still tempt one close.