Hidden Gem in Perthshire

Corrour is the most remote railway station in Britain, a halt on the West Highland Line to Fort William on the bleak and beautiful moorland of Rannoch Moor at 411 metres above sea level, accessible only by train as there is no public road within several kilometres of the station. The combination of the extraordinary remoteness, the bleakness and the beauty of the surrounding Rannoch Moor landscape and the memorable experience of arriving or departing by the single railway line that crosses this uninhabited expanse creates one of the most distinctive and most memorable railway destinations in Britain. The station became widely known following its appearance in Danny Boyle's 1996 film Trainspotting, in which the characters travel to Corrour to walk on Rannoch Moor in a sequence that captures the appeal of this remote place with unusual accuracy. The station tearoom, the only facility within walking distance, provides warmth and refreshment that takes on an outsize significance in this context of extreme remoteness. The walking available from Corrour on Rannoch Moor and to the surrounding mountains is exceptional, the complete absence of roads creating a landscape of genuine wilderness quality unusual in the Scottish Highlands where most mountain walking involves road approaches. The circuit of Loch Ossian from the station is one of the finest accessible wilderness walks in Scotland, and the more demanding routes to the Munros of the surrounding hills provide serious mountain walking of the highest quality.

The Fortingall Yew in the churchyard of Fortingall village in Perthshire is the oldest living organism in Europe, a yew tree estimated to be between 3,000 and 9,000 years old whose survival in the quietly beautiful Glen Lyon church garden provides one of the most extraordinary natural heritage encounters available in Scotland. The range of the age estimate reflects the difficulty of dating ancient yews, but even the minimum estimate makes the Fortingall Yew incomparably older than any other living thing of comparable significance in the British Isles. The yew was already ancient when it was described by visitors in the eighteenth century, when its girth was measured at 52 feet and a funeral was recorded as passing through the interior of its hollowed trunk. The centuries since that measurement have seen the tree change considerably, the great trunk splitting and the various sections developing separately, but the living sections of the ancient tree continue to grow and to carry the genetic material of an organism that was already substantial when the first iron tools appeared in Scotland. Glen Lyon, the longest enclosed glen in Scotland, provides an extraordinary landscape setting for this pilgrimage to the oldest tree in Europe. The glen's remoteness, its character of deep pastoral beauty and the atmospheric quality of the ancient church and its incredible yew create a combination that ranks among the most distinctive natural and cultural heritage experiences in Scotland.

Rannoch Moor is one of the most remote and elemental landscapes in Britain: an enormous expanse of blanket bog, lochan and rock stretching across some 150 square kilometres of the Scottish Highlands between the Black Mount to the south and Loch Rannoch to the east. No road crosses its centre. The few paths that exist require careful navigation and decent footwear, and the combination of scale, exposure and the simple absence of human infrastructure gives the moor a character of genuine wildness that is increasingly rare in these islands. The moor occupies a high plateau between 300 and 400 metres above sea level that was extensively glaciated during the last Ice Age. The ice stripped the bedrock almost bare in places, depositing boulder fields and moraines across the landscape while excavating the numerous small lochs and lochans that dot the surface. After the ice retreated the poor drainage and high rainfall of the area allowed peat to accumulate to depths of several metres across vast areas, creating the blanket bog habitat that now characterises most of the moor. In places the peat has been carved by erosion into hags and channels that make cross-country travel demanding. The West Highland Line crosses the southern edge of the moor between Rannoch Station and Bridge of Orchy, providing one of the most extraordinary railway journeys in Britain. The line was constructed across the moor in the 1890s using methods that included floating sections of track on a raft of brushwood and rubble across the deepest peat. The train journey across Rannoch Moor, with the vast open bogland stretching to the horizon and the mountains of Glen Coe visible to the southwest, is an experience that puts the passenger briefly in touch with the vast indifference of this wild and ancient landscape. Despite its apparent emptiness, Rannoch Moor supports significant wildlife. Red deer roam the moor in considerable numbers and are frequently seen from the railway or the road. Golden plovers nest on the higher ground, short-eared owls quarter the moor for voles, and red-throated divers breed on the lochans in summer. The rare floating plants of the deep bog pools, including sundews and bog asphodel, reward those who take the time to look closely at the low vegetation.

Ruthven Barracks near Kingussie in the Cairngorm area of the Highlands are the most impressive and most atmospheric surviving example of the military barracks built by the British government in the Scottish Highlands following the Jacobite Rising of 1715, a substantial stone fortification on an ancient motte that stands in dramatic isolation in the Spey Valley and whose gaunt and roofless state makes it one of the most evocative military ruins in Scotland. Historic Environment Scotland manages the barracks, which are freely accessible to visitors. The barracks were built between 1719 and 1721 on the site of a castle associated with the Lords of Badenoch, the great medieval landholders of this area, to house a garrison of government troops whose purpose was to overawe the Highland population and prevent the movement of arms and men through the Spey valley, a key route through the Highland interior. The building withstood an attack by Jacobite forces during the 1745 Rising but was captured and destroyed by the retreating Jacobite army in February 1746, two months before the final defeat at Culloden. The final act at Ruthven Barracks was one of the most poignant moments of the Jacobite cause. Several thousand Highland soldiers assembled here after Culloden in the hope that Bonnie Prince Charlie would continue the struggle, the embers of the Rising still burning in the days immediately after the defeat. The message they received from the Prince, advising each man to seek his own safety as best he could, effectively ended the '45 and the soldiers dispersed across the Highlands to whatever fate awaited them. The setting of the barracks on their motte in the wide Spey Valley, with the Cairngorm mountains visible to the east and the Monadhliath to the west, is one of the finest Highland landscape settings of any historic monument.