Overview of Rannoch Moor

Located at the southern extreme of Highland Council Area, stretching eastward into Perth and Kinross and southwards into Argyll and Bute, Rannoch Moor is an upland plateau of lochs, lochans, peat bogs and streams that covers 5180 ha (12800 acres) and at points reaches an elevation of over 384m (1260 feet). The area is also surrounded by mountains which reach a height in excess of 914m (3000 feet) to the southeast and west, and 610m (2000 feet) to the north. The moor is the watershed of Central Scotland and rivers either flow west to the Atlantic Ocean or east to the North Sea. Created 20,000 years ago by the movement of a glacier, the area is dotted with lochs and rock remnants, characteristics of this event. Today it is regarded as one of the last truly wild places in Scotland. Although traversed in a north south direction by the A82 trunk road from Glasgow to Fort William and by the West Highland Railway, there is no west east crossing of the moor. The major lochs of Rannoch Moor are Loch Laidon, Loch Ba and Lochan na-Achlaise. The novelist Robert Louis Stevenson referred to it in his novel Kidnapped as 'A wearier looking desert a man never saw'.