Eilidh Campbell
Reading the Land Under Your Boots
Almost every Highland walk follows somebody's road. Sometimes it is a wide ribbon of rubble stamped onto a hillside by soldiers with picks and gunpowder. Sometimes it is a faint green line through the heather, a scatter of flat stones where a ford used to be, or a dead-straight stretch of tarmac on a glen floor that still obeys a line surveyed three centuries ago. Knowing which tradition a path belongs to changes what you notice, and it makes you a sharper navigator. The map stops being a set of squiggles and becomes a story about cattle, cartridges and cameras.
Wade's Roads: The Military Legacy, 1725–1737
General George Wade was sent north after the 1715 rising to move troops quickly through country that had almost no usable roads. Between 1725 and 1737 his teams built roughly 250 miles of road and some 40 bridges, and the alignment still gives them away: long straight runs broken by sweeping, patient zigzags that keep the gradient kind to wheels and hooves.
The best surviving stretch is the Corrieyairack Pass, climbing from Garva Bridge to around 770 metres. It is a serious hill day, and the older bridge at the foot of the climb is a fine place to sit and consider what a laden cart must have felt like in the rain. After Wade, Major William Caulfeild pushed the network further north and east, but the great Muckle Spate of 1829 swept away a great many of the bridges, and the roads quietly decayed into the hill tracks we enjoy today.
Drove Roads: Cattle, Trysts and the Long Walk South
Before roads, there was trade. Black cattle from Skye, the Uists, Kintail and Lochaber were walked south in herds of a hundred or more, bound for the trysts at Crieff and Falkirk and eventually the English markets. A herd might cover 15 to 20 kilometres a day, which sounds leisurely until you remember it took weeks.
Drovers chose ground the way modern walkers should: broad, well-drained shoulders a few hundred metres up the glen side rather than the boggy floor below. That is why so many of these routes feel generous and comfortable underfoot. Look for wide, grassy ribbons that braid into several strands, flattened patches where a herd rested, and map names such as stance, tryst or rathad — Gaelic for road. Glen Tilt, the Gaick and the approach to the Lairig Ghru all carry this history.
Victorian Tracks, Stalking Paths and the Railway Age
Queen Victoria's arrival at Balmoral in 1848 turned the Highlands into a destination. Estates built stalking paths engineered for ponies, holding steady gradients and linking high corries to a stalker's bothy or a lunch hut. These are often the finest paths in the hills: pitched with flat stones, drained on the uphill side, and still serviceable 150 years later.
The railways finished the job. Deeside reached Ballater in 1866, the Highland line reached Inverness in 1863, the West Highland line reached Fort William in 1894, and the Kyle line opened up Ross-shire. Photographers with plate cameras and heavy tripods followed, making the long walk in with a mule. The bulldozed estate tracks of the mid-twentieth century, and the hydro schemes beside them, are simply the newest chapter of the same argument about who gets to move across this landscape and how.
What to Look For on the Map and the Ground
- Military: straight alignments, dramatic zigzags, single-arch humpback bridges, occasional carved dates.
- Droving: wide, grassy, braided tracks set above the glen floor, with resting places and trade names.
- Victorian estate: even gradients, stone pitching, gates and posts, connecting high ground rather than settlements.
- Names to watch for: Wade, Militia, Drove, Stance, Tryst, Rathad, Bealach.
Walking and Photographing These Routes Today
Treat old roads as historical ground rather than pavement. Pitched stone is treacherous when wet, and the ground either side is often boggier than it looks. Waterproof boots and a pole earn their place, and in a wet summer the Corrieyairack and Glen Tilt approaches can be genuinely hard going.
For light, the northern summer gives you a very long golden hour, but June and July bring midges — plan for wind, or work the late evening when they thin out. Autumn is the photographer's season: the red deer rut runs from mid-September into late October, with stags roaring at dawn, though you should keep well back and use a long lens rather than pushing a herd. Remember that deer stalking is a working activity: the season runs from 1 July to 20 October for stags, and many estates restrict access on certain days. Check locally, or plan hill days on Sundays and the quieter weeks. In winter, daylight can run from half past eight to half past three, so start early and carry a headtorch regardless.
Spring offers the black grouse lek, best heard before dawn from a respectful distance, and ptarmigan still half in white plumage against a snow patch. Whatever the season, stay on the old line where erosion is bad — these roads were built to shed water, and they usually hold up better than the newer desire paths beside them.
