A long Wester Ross loch scattered with wooded islands and old pines, with the peak of Slioch standing over its far shore
Loch Maree runs for about thirteen miles through Wester Ross, one of the larger lochs in the Highlands and, to many eyes, one of the finest. Dozens of small islands are dotted down its length, several of them carrying remnants of old Caledonian pinewood, the native Scots pine forest that once spread across the region. The peak of Slioch rises steeply above the eastern shore and gives the loch its best-known view.
The name comes from Saint Maelrubha, an Irish monk who founded a monastery at Applecross in the 7th century. One of the islands, Isle Maree, holds the remains of a chapel and a burial ground linked to him, along with an old wishing tree studded with coins hammered into the bark. At the south-eastern end, Beinn Eighe was declared a national nature reserve in 1951, the first in Britain, set up partly to protect this rare surviving woodland.
The A832 runs along the northern shore between Kinlochewe and Gairloch, with laybys and a couple of forest walks where you can stop and take it in. There is no passenger boat service on the loch itself. If you carry on towards the coast, Inverewe Garden near Poolewe is worth the detour for its unlikely near-subtropical planting so far north.
