Ross McDowell / Tartan Compass
Glen Coe is one of Scotland's great outdoor meeting places, from riverside walks and long days through the glen to climbing, mountaineering and the high ridges above it.
People come to Glen Coe for very different versions of the same landscape. Some stay low, following woodland and riverside paths or walking through the hill passes between Glen Coe and Glen Etive. Others head for the summits and ridges that have made the glen central to Scottish mountaineering. In winter, snow and ice bring another community of climbers and skiers. Nearby Glen Etive draws campers, paddlers and people into the river itself. The National Trust for Scotland maintains around 60km of paths across the reserve, from short low-level routes to demanding mountain days. That modern outdoor life sits on top of a much older inhabited landscape. Archaeology is recovering the remains of townships, cultivation and everyday objects from the people who lived here before nineteenth-century changes in farming altered the glen. The events of 1692 remain part of the story, but they are not the only story Glen Coe has to tell.
Watch how many different ways people use the same ground. A family on a short walk, a backpacker carrying everything for the day, a climber looking towards the ridges and someone heading into Glen Etive are all reading the landscape differently. Then look below the dramatic skyline. Paths, woodland, burns, old cultivation and settlement remains bring the human scale back into view. At the western end, the River Coe reaches Loch Leven and the mountain landscape begins to become maritime.
The scale gets me every time. Coming in past Rannoch Moor and the Black Mount, the landscape suddenly tightens and the mountains rise around you. What I like is that you don't have to be a mountaineer to appreciate it. Staying low still gives you that sense of scale, while gaining height can make the place feel remote very quickly. I often find myself thinking about the people who lived, worked and kept livestock here long before we arrived for recreation.
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