Glencoe Lochan

Above Glencoe village, Forestry and Land Scotland manages a small network of paths around Glencoe Lochan, an artificial loch created in the 1890s by Lord Strathcona, a Scottish-born fur trader who had made his fortune in Canada. The story goes that he had the lochan and its surrounding conifers planted to remind his Canadian wife of home, and the mix of spruce and pine does look more like the Rockies than the rest of Glen Coe.

The shortest option, the Lochan trail, is a flat, firm gravel loop of about 1.6km, comfortably done in well under an hour, with benches at intervals and a couple of viewpoints back towards the Pap of Glencoe and across to the Aonach Eagach ridge. Longer woodland and “mountain” trails extend the walk to two or three times that distance, with more undulating ground and a steeper short pull to a viewpoint bench, but none of it approaches hillwalking; the paths stay inside the forest throughout.

This is the walk to use as a counterweight to a hard day elsewhere in the glen, or as the only walk of the day for anyone travelling with small children, buggies or limited mobility. It has none of the drama of the glen itself, which is exactly the point: it’s a rest-day option a few minutes’ drive from the village, not a substitute for seeing Glen Coe properly. For that, without a walk, stop at the Study on the A82 and look at the Three Sisters from the roadside.