Walking in the Cairngorms - A Walking and Scrambling Guidebook

• Location
• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Maps
• Reviews
• Further Reading

View Sample Route Map

Kingussie - 49 Summer Road to Ruthven

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Start/finish: Ruthven Barracks NN764995
Distance: 9km/5.5 miles
Ascent: 200m/600ft
Approx time: 3hr
Max altitude: 400m
Terrain: Moorland path, sketchy for a short distance, then tarred track and good path

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The route used by Hanoverian troops to reach the security of Ruthven Barracks from the south is still visible across the moors, though a little care is required right at the top. Those seeking to follow it further than this route does will find no onward path and a missing footbridge. Instead, this route drops into wooded Glen Tromie, with a choice of a heathery hill beyond (Route 50, Croidh-la) or a tarred track down the valley, for a finish through the Insh Marshes bird reserve.

Start at the car park at Ruthven Barracks. Above the west end, a gate with a green waymark leads onto a short fenced track. After 150m is a second gate. Here the right-of-way turns right, on a rough track, turning up left at the next field corner to cross the crest of a field to an abandoned house. Pass to left of the house to a gate and ladder stile onto open hill.

Cross the stream beyond at a stream junction, and take an inconspicuous green track ahead south-southeast. The track is much clearer as it curves around the western flank of Beinn Bhuidhe (Ben Vui: yellow hill – this hill has radio masts: the obvious track leading up to these isn’t part of our route).

The track crosses a damp dip behind Beinn Bhuidhe, still south-southeast, and climbs the next slope as a sunken dip in the heather, with a modern path alongside on the right. Before the crest of the slope, and just before a small cairn, the sunken dip of the old road bears slightly right while our path bears left. It passes two more cairns over the crest of the moor, then goes down to a ladder stile to enter birch woods.

Above Glentromie Lodge, a signboard marks the start of a diversion to the path, where it turns left, with white-topped marker poles. It runs down to a stile, then follows a deer fence on its right to join the tarred access track of the lodge. The bridge over the River Tromie is just ahead.

Turn left on the tarred track for 3km to the B970. Turn left over Tromie Bridge, and in a few more steps turn off right through a gate into Tromie Bridge Meadow.

Follow the green track ahead for 150m to join a white-arrow waymarked RSPB path, and also green Badenoch Way arrows. Keep ahead on a path that joins the River Tromie. Follow it downstream to a kissing gate, and continue with a wall to the right for 200m. The path now zigzags up left and (at waymark) back right at the top of the slope.

The path now follows roughly the top of the flood-plain banking that defines the edge of Insh Marshes, over hummocky ground northwest then southwest. At a fence corner turn right for 50m, and cross a track to a gate opposite. In 100m, at a second gate, a viewpoint over Insh Marshes with a picnic table is on the right, while the wide green path continues on the left.

A branch path on the right leads down to a hide, with the sudden open view out over the marshes. The main path crosses a footbridge and continues as before along the top of the Insh-edge bank to a car park with another hide.

Leave the car park, turn right along a gated stretch of old road, and join the B970 for the last 1km back to the Barracks. Having walked the Summer Road to Ruthven, a visit to the place itself is now implied.