Spean Bridge

Why base here

Spean Bridge is a village of about 550 people in Lochaber, by Wikipedia’s 2020 figure, and it takes its name not from Thomas Telford’s bridge of 1819 that carries the A82 through it but from the High Bridge, upstream, on General Wade’s military road to Fort Augustus. There, on 16 August 1745, eleven MacDonalds of Keppoch and a piper turned back two companies of the Royal Scots, in what Wikipedia calls the first engagement of the Jacobite rising. The High Bridge is a ruin now, and Walkhighlands warns that what is left is dangerous and must not be accessed.

The case for sleeping here is the Grey Corries, the quartzite ridge that fills the view south and east, and Glen Spean running away towards Loch Laggan. Fort William, about 8 miles south-west and the next station down the West Highland Line, is the base for Ben Nevis; Spean Bridge is the nearer one for the hills behind it.

On foot versus by car

Two walks start in the village. The Commando Memorial and High Bridge circuit is 4.5km with 82m of ascent in about an hour and a half by Walkhighlands’ figures, on a well-made path through woodland by the Spean, with livestock on the way, so dogs on leads. The memorial is Scott Sutherland’s three bronze Commandos, cast in 1951 and listed at Category A by Historic Environment Scotland, and the Queen Mother unveiled it on 27 September 1952, the Commando Veterans Archive records; Achnacarry, nearby, trained about 26,000 Commandos between 1942 and 1946, the BBC reports. The Killiechonate woods, a working forest planted from the 1960s by the Alcan aluminium company, have a 4.5km waymarked loop that Walkhighlands says can be started from the station.

The hills need a car or a long walk in. The Grey Corries start several kilometres up a rough track beyond Corriechoille, at the end of a minor road, about 4 miles from the village in all: 21.5km and 1,544m of ascent over three Munros in nine to ten hours, on rough, rocky ridges that are narrow in places, and Walkhighlands posts notices about the track and its parking on the route page. The car park for the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy is about 6 miles away up the glen from Roybridge; the roads are the shorelines of ice-dammed lakes from the end of the last Ice Age, NatureScot says, and Walkhighlands’ 4km circuit there is pathless in places. Creag Meagaidh, from Aberarder on Loch Laggan, is about 18 miles east by road.

Practicalities

Spean Bridge station opened in 1894, Wikipedia says, and is served by ScotRail and the Caledonian Sleeper, with no ticket office, so tickets are bought in advance or on the train. Scottish Citylink route 919 between Inverness and Fort William calls, and Shiel Buses route 41 runs between Roy Bridge, Spean Bridge, the Nevis Range and Fort William. The unofficial East Highland Way passes through on its way from Fort William to Aviemore, Walkhighlands notes; the Great Glen Way does not, and reaches Gairlochy instead. The A86 leaves the A82 here for Glen Spean.

With children

The memorial circuit is the one: Walkhighlands calls the path suitable for some all-terrain buggies, warns that the wooden bridges can be slippery, and points out the shop and cafe in the village a ten-minute detour away; the last stretch is beside the A82, which is busy. At Aberarder, on the way to Creag Meagaidh, the Allt Dubh and Alderwood trails make a 2.5km loop through alder woodland with plenty of benches and tables, and in Glen Roy NatureScot says the Parallel Roads are easily seen from the public road without walking the hillside at all.