The rugged wilds of Corrour Trainspotting, movie monologues and Munro bagging

FOR many it is a location that will be forever immortalised by the words of Ewan McGregor’s character Renton in Trainspotting when he proclaims: “It’s s **** being Scottish.” The memorable monologue is juxtaposed against the ruggedly beautiful wilds of Corrour, on the edge of Rannoch Moor, as the quartet of Tommy, Spud,

Sick Boy and Renton leave behind the drug-addled underbelly of 1980s Edinburgh for a day trip to the great outdoors. Trainspotting – released in

1996 – celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, although there is more to Corrour than simply a cameo in a cult film.

Trains, perhaps unsurprisingly, are part of that story. Corrour is the highest and most remote train station in Britain, part of the West Highland Line from Glasgow to Fort William and Mallaig. The railway was laid across the 57,000-acre Corrour Estate in 1894, its construction agreed by the then owner Sir John Stirling Maxwell on the proviso that Corrour station was built, bringing a lifeline to those who lived and worked here at the tail-end of the Victorian era.

Stirling Maxwell was a philanthropist and benefactor, as well as a pioneering botanist and forester, who created an innovative garden at nearby Corrour Lodge, one filled with specimens gathered from the plant-hunting expeditions that he sponsored to the Himalayas and China. Another project saw Loch Ossian ringed with an arboretum as Stirling Maxwell planted Scots pine and experimented with lodgepole pine, European and Japanese larch and Sitka spruce.

Today, the estate – bought in 1995 by Lisbet Rausing of the Swedish Tetra Pak dynasty – is managed to create habitats for wildlife that includes black and red grouse, black-throated divers, golden eagles, mountain hare, otters, peregrine falcons and pine martens, as well as red, roe and sika deer.

Corrour station serves as a gateway to one of the Scotland’s most awe-inspiring vistas, drawing walkers and climbers who seek to tackle a trio of Munros: Beinn na Lap, Sgor Gaibhre and Carn Dearg.

What to watch: Trainspotting and its sequel T2 Trainspotting. The stretch of track between Corrour and Rannoch stations was also used for the 2009 movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

What to read: Lucy Foley’s gripping thriller The Hunting Party (HarperCollins,

£12.99) is set in the fictional Loch Corrin Estate where the bleak landscapes bear an uncanny resemblance to those of a wintry Corrour.