Britain's first national nature reserve, protecting ancient Caledonian pinewood and a pale quartzite mountain ridge above Loch Maree in Torridon
Beinn Eighe became Britain’s first national nature reserve in 1951 — an NNR, meaning a place set aside for its wildlife and scenery. It sits in Torridon, in the Wester Ross hills, on the south shore of Loch Maree near Kinlochewe. The reserve protects one of the finest surviving stands of Caledonian pinewood, the old native Scots pine forest that once covered much of the Highlands, along with the mountain of Beinn Eighe itself, whose long ridge of pale quartzite scree can look snow-capped from far off. Two waymarked trails start from the road by the loch, a short woodland loop and a steeper path up into the corries, the high rocky bowls below the tops. Hardier walkers carry on to the Munros on the ridge above, a Munro being a Scottish hill over 3,000 feet (914 metres).
