River Moriston Waterfall Walk

After leaving Balloch on Loch Lomand way too soon (and forgoing any more chance of hiking there due to our late arrival from Iceland), we hit the road on a rainy Sunday, May 18, and headed to the Isle of Skye.  Along the way, we drove through the absolutely spectacular Glen Coe, the rain never letting up, and past an incredible castle, Eilean Donan, to end up on the Isle of Skye.  We spent Monday, May 19, driving around the Isle of Skye to see the amazing scenery.  There are many hikes there, but I didn't have maps and decided to go with the others and see scenery from the car.

I was tempted to post some photos of the castles, cliffs, mountains, and seals that we saw in those two days, but this is a hiking blog, and I didn't hike during this time, unless you call walking around the grounds of the two castles as hiking.  So I suppose that I should not post those photos.

My next chance to hike was on Tuesday when we left Isle of Skye to head to Loch Ness.  It was a gorgeous day, and warm, with temperatures in the low 60's F.  Along the drive, and nearly to Loch Ness (see location below with the blue arrow head), we saw a chance to do a short but very scenic waterfall hike along the River Moriston.

Here is a closer view of where the hike is.  You should be able to see that the river flows between some steep hills as it flows the short distance from this point into Loch Ness.

For such a short hike - less than a mile loop - there was plenty of scenery.  Check out the double arched bridges just above the falls.

There is more river and less bridge in this photo.  The falls are not huge or tall, but very pretty all of the same.

There is lovely woodlands in this area along the trails,

along with some interesting roots with some of the trees.  It looks like severe erosion happened here.

You can get an idea of how steep the terrain is by the river from this shot.

There was this great stone hut along the River Moriston.

I went inside the stone hut and took this picture out its window of the river and the two arched bridges.

After ending our short hike, I sent to the bridge and took a picture down the river.  It is hard to see, but the stone hut is at the base of the tall conifer in the center of the photo.  After this hike, we headed out to Glen Affric to do another hike.  More about that in my next post.