Glen Affric was never on the list of places to visit. I knew nothing about it and only booked our stay near here because it was the only place near Loch Ness that had vacancies. We visited Loch Ness on our way to the accommodation that night and I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed, it looked similar to Loch Lomond and well any other loch in Scotland. While we were paying for our accommodation at Cannich Caravan Park – we had a camping pod – Matt the owner told us all about Glen Affric. He was a local who absolutely loved this area and had so much to tell us. He gave us a map and wrote down all the diving distances so we would be able to navigate our way around tomorrow.
Our first stop was Plodda Falls, about 6 miles from Cannich and a short walk from the car park. You come first to a little waterfall and then a much bigger waterfall.
The much bigger Plodda Falls, at the top is a wooden look out which extends over the top of the falls. You can look straight down the waterfall but it wasn’t until I came down to this viewpoint I really got a sense of how big this waterfall is. Standing here my lens got soaked as I tried to captured the power of this fall. Matt said this was his favourite and I could easily see why.
The roads around this side of Glen Affric were terrible, full of pot holes and gravel tracks still the views were incredible and made the sketchy conditions all the more worth it!
We then headed off down the other side of the loch towards Dog Falls. Having just seen a waterfall we skipped that stopped and carried on towards the mountains and the River Affric stop at the end of the road. The further along we drove the more the mountains came it to view – we stopped so many times to take photos. However editing these photos I’ve realised that nearly every time we stopped the view was basically the same!
Another shot of the view.
This was our first drive on a single lane road where sheep roamed freely and the views made it hard to concentrate on the road in front of you.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather the day we set out to explore Glen Affric. With the clear skies and sun shinning down on us it just made everything look even better.
I loved the contrast of the snowy mountains and evergreen trees filling the landscape. This shot was taken from the view point at River Affric.
Looking towards Loch Affric you can see the moutains towering in the background while a private house sits nestled in the loch, I think this was one of those many occasions where I decided I wanted to live in the house I was seeing. It happened a lot throughout our trip.
A wider shot of the view from River Affric over Loch Affric.
It is very rare I use black and white images but I felt this close up of the mountains needed it. I couldn’t believe how much snow cover there was and how many mountains there were. This was a scene that became very normal along the highlands.
And lastly a shot that sums up Glen Affric and Scotland to me. Mountains with a very green and brown landscape. This became such an iconic shot and colour scheme throughout our roadtrip around Scotland.
And in case you want to explore this area, here is a gorgeous map done by Cannich Caravan Park
