Meall Fuar-mhonaidh above Loch Ness

Meall Fuar-mhonaidh, the rounded hill on the west shore of Loch Ness south-west of Drumnadrochit, is the most prominent summit around the loch: 699m, a Graham and a Marilyn with 234m of prominence, and visible from most of the loch’s length. It is the hill in the middle of every photograph taken from Dores, and the view from its top, down the Great Glen to Ben Nevis one way and along the whole of Loch Ness the other, is the reason to climb it.

The route starts from a car park just before the end of the Bunloit road out of Drumnadrochit, at NH 492238; the road continues only to a pottery, whose parking is its own. A signed hill footpath follows a small stream, crosses a track through two gates and climbs through birch and hazel woodland, steeply for a stretch, to a gate in a fence, then leaves the trees for the moor, crosses the deer fence by a tall stile and gains the ridge. Walkhighlands describes the path as clear throughout but eroded, rough and boggy on the upper slopes, and very steep for the last hundred metres to a cairn that is not the summit; the true top is a further cairn across a shallow dip on the knobbly plateau beyond. Ordnance Survey Explorer 416 covers it, and there is no public transport to the start.

At 9km and 535m of ascent, allow three to five hours there and back by the same path. It suits a walker based anywhere on Loch Ness who wants one proper hill with the loch laid out below, and it is the obvious first summit from Drumnadrochit or Invermoriston. It does not suit anyone who wants dry feet, because the ridge is boggy in places whatever the season, or a first hill for young children, because the last hundred metres are very steep. For Glen Affric’s trees instead of Loch Ness’s water, the Dog Falls circuit through Cannich keeps to waymarked forest paths with half the climb.