Strathpeffer and the Rogie Falls

About trip

Minimum Time: 5hrs Ascent: 1,200ft Difficulty Level: 1 - Easy Paths: Waymarked paths and tracks, no stiles Landscape: Plantation, wild forest and riverside Dog Friendliness: Keep on lead for section past Loch Kinellan Parking: Main square, Strathpeffer Public Toilets: At start, Contin (Point 4) and Rogie Falls car parks Description: Stand on the bridge at Rogie Falls between July and September, when the river’s fairly full, and you might catch a glimpse of a leaping salmon. It’s a thrilling sight to see a 3ft (1m) long fish attempting to swim up against the force of the water. Eventually it’ll make it, or else discover the easy way round - the fish ladder carved out of the rock on the right-hand side. But if you’d been here 200 years ago, that single salmon would have been a dozen, even a hundred. The Rise and Fall of the Salmon. Salmon was once food for the taking. You went down to the river and took as many as you could eat. Smoked above a peat fire, it was a staple winter food. Farm workers even used their industrial muscle to demand that they shouldn’t have to eat salmon more than three times a week. Today, however, wild salmon are heading for extinction. The last decade saw the catch in Scotland’s rivers shrink from 1,200 to 200 tons due to netting in the estuaries, and in their feeding grounds around the Arctic pack ice. Angling clubs have bought up and discontinued estuary netting rights but the international community squabbles on about the Arctic drift nets and now parasites and disease from fish farms pose a new danger. Seven Ages of a Salmon. Egg, fry, alevin, parr, smolt, salmon, kelt - these are the seven ages of the salmon’s life. For one or two years it behaves like a trout, hanging in the still water behind a boulder, waiting for food to float by. But then its scales become silver and it turns downstream, totally altering its body chemistry to enable it to live in salt water. Return of the Salmon Four or five years later, now called a salmon, it returns. We don’t know how it navigates from Greenland back to the Cromarty Firth. Once there, it identifies the outflow of the Conon by the taste of the water and works its way upstream to return to the patch of gravel where its life began. While you're there: The Highland Museum of Childhood is in the Victorian station building at Strathpeffer. Its displays on the life of children include social history, but also some delightful photographs. There is a toy collection, with fine wax dolls, and hands-on toys for younger visitors. Where to eat and drink: Wee Swally Victorian Spa Tearoom is above the start of the walk. The Victorian station has a station-platform café where home-baked scones are served. Directions: Head along the main road towards Contin. When you reach the edge of the town, turn right at a metal signpost for Garve then, at a bend in the lane, turn left, following another signpost. 2 Follow track to the left of Loch Kinellan. As it bends right, keep ahead up a path beside tall broom bushes to the corner of a plantation. Here you join a larger track leading into the forest. Continue for 0.5 mile (800m) until it reaches a signpost. 3 Turn left for View Rock on a good path with green waymarkers. At View Rock, a side-path diverts to the right for the viewpoint, then rejoins. After a long descent, ignore a green path off to the left and follow green waymarkers downhill. At a forest road go straight over beside a signpost. The path crosses two more forest roads to Contin Forest car park. 4 At the end of the car park, pick up a wide path, ‘River Walk’. Where red waymarkers turn back right, keep ahead on a rougher path with deer head markers. It bends up right beside a stream to a forest road. Turn left, signed ‘Garve’, and in 80yds (73m) bear left, heading slightly downhill. 5 Go on for 600yds (549m), when a small track on the left is signed ‘Rogie Falls Bridge’. At its foot, cross a spectacular footbridge below the falls and turn right, upstream. The path has green waymarkers and after 0.25 mile (400m) bends left, away from the river. It crosses rocky ground to a junction. Turn up right, to Rogie Falls car park. 6 Leave the car park through a wooden arch and follow green waymarkers back to the bridge. Retrace the outward route to Point 5 and turn sharp left up another forest road. It leads uphill to where a much fainter track crosses. 7 Turn right down the smaller track to pass between obstructing boulders, to a signpost. Turn left, signed ‘Strathpeffer’. After 600yds (549m) it reaches the signpost at Point 3. Keep ahead and retrace the outward route to Point 2. Turn left on the tarred lane, which becomes a track. At Kinloch house bear right, then turn left through a kissing gate, with a second one beyond leading into a plantation with a signpost for Strathpeffer. 8 Follow the main path ahead until you see Strathpeffer down on the right. At the next junction bear right down the wood edge and turn right into town. The street on the left leads past a church with a square steeple, where you turn down right to the main square.