A mountain legend

The Cluanie Inn, Highland

This Glen Shiel inn is an institution among Munro baggers – walkers keen to reach all 282 Scottish summits over 3000 feet – because it’s a brilliant basecamp for ticking off a lot of peaks. From its door you can reach the South Glen Shiel Ridge and bag seven Munros in one (very long!) day. Across the glen you can tick off another nine, hitting three a day on the Five Sisters of Kintail, the Brothers Ridge, and a loop over Sgùrr nan Conbhairean, Càrn Ghluasaid and Sàil Chaorainn.

The Cluanie offers welcome comfort after such nerve-testing and legknackering exertions, with a wellstocked bar, a menu including burgers, pizzas, haggis, neeps and tatties, and luxurious bedrooms too.

And it’s not all high in the sky: the corollary of big mountains is deep glens, many threaded with stalkers’ paths including one through to remote Glen Affric. You might even be tracing the routes of cattle drovers, the first customers of this inn back in 1787.

WALK HERE: Turn to Walk 26 for a Brothers Ridge route

MORE INFO: blacksheephotels.com/ the-cluanie-inn/; 01320 340238