We have spent five days visiting Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands, the weather being what is expected during the winter months, the weather was a tad rubbish, strong winds and near horizontal rain interspersed with clearer skies and dry periods. During this time, it turned out that we would spend most of the time visiting the waterfalls in, and around Glencoe, although this was not planned, in hindsight, it was probably a wise decision as the water levels in the falls, emphasized these.
As we begun to gain height after Loch Lomond, we called in at the Falls of Falloch, whilst the volume of water flowing over these was nowhere near as that we experienced in October, a substantial amount of water was flowing in the River Falloch. The car park was near capacity, with a large number of visitors present at the waterfalls. I got a selfie of me in front of the falls this constituted the only photo form this visit.
We arrived at our hotel in Glencoe, during the afternoon, once checked in and cases unpacked, a quick look outside saw the rain barreling up the valley, in a near horizontal direction, this gave a good indication on the strength of the wind. The correct decision of staying indoors was chosen, so we retired to the bar and restaurant to sample some of the hotel’s hospitality.
The next morning, weather conditions were still wet and windy, but nowhere has powerful as the day before. After breakfast I decided to head out on my own to try and get to some locations and get some images without getting too wet in the process. The first port of call was the Meeting of the Three Waters, I had watched a Cliff Hands (#outsidepursuits, Cliff hands photography) video on YouTube in which he got underneath the bridge that carries the A82 through this area, from where he could photograph with some shelter form the wind and rain. Who am I to argue with a knowledgeable photographer of Glencoe, so I followed in his footsteps.
I soon decided to leave the shelter of the bridge, and walked out on to the grassy ledge from where I could get a portrait and landscape image of the waterfalls, which were now in front of me at eye level. From here I took many photos with varying shutter speeds and aperture settings to find the most pleasing effect of the water has it fell down the rock face.
My next location was a stop off at Loch Achtriochtan, further down the Glen towards the village of Glencoe. Upon surveying the views, the heavy cloud and flat light did not create the best conditions of a photo from the shore of the Loch, looking back up the valley, so, I changed composition and choose the waterfall that starts above the Achtriochtan white cottage, with the waterfalls that comes from the mountain of Stob Coire nan Lochan into the River Coe. The final image for this location of the waterfall is more of a snap-shot, there was not a lot of options available to create more impact of the scene
Clachaig Falls
From Loch Achtriochtan, my next stop off was just across the road at the Clachaig Falls, I just had to drive down the road to the car park at the Clachaig Inn, and walk back along the road, by doing this I was not blocking any parking places.
The waters flowing down the falls was quite substantial, the white water contrasting against the heavy cloud covered skies.
Has I retraced my route along the road towards the falls, I dropped down to the rivers edge, keeping a lookout for any attractive compositions.
I managed to capture a reasonable photo of the river running towards me, with a barren pine tree on the right side of the image, the bareness of the tree contrasting against the colours in the water.
As I slowly moved up towards the main Clachaig Falls where the fish run cut out of the rocks to allow fish to swim above the falls, I found myself clambering over the rocks to get closer and lower vantage point of the falls. I found it quite difficult to make a decent photo of the falls due to the width of them and the interference of the river banks into the image.
After a good 40 minutes or so I had captured the best images that I was going to achieve, to finish off, I took a video of the falls on my phone for uploading to social media.
From here I headed back to the hotel for some food and a bite to eat. I also collected my good wife as we decided to head up to Glen Nevis at Forth William, I had read that there are some interesting water falls in this Glen.
The plan was to get to Steall Falls, as these looked impressive in the pictures I had seen of them, and it was somewhere where we had never visited below. Steall Falls was a very beautiful waterfall ostensibly tumbling 120m into a wide open scenic valley backed by tall mountains of the Nevis Gorge.
It’s said to be Scotland’s second highest waterfall, which (if true) would be fitting considering it is in close proximity to Ben Nevis, which is the tallest mountain in Britain.
The Hike to Steall Falls began our hike at a car park at the end of the road passing right near the head of Glen Nevis.
From there, we went on a well-established trail that before long started to climb as well as get rockier as it clung to ledges on the north side of the Nevis Gorge. At this point Carole made the decision that she could not continue due to the more challenging conditions that we were encountering. For the most part, the ledges were fairly wide enough to keep us from being too nervous about drop-offs, with some of drop-offs being significant enough to induce butterflies in our stomachs if we were to step closer to the edge.
As we continued on the now-seemingly-unending climb, the valley then narrowed to a point where we were in a gorge as the rocky walls closed in on both sides.
Meanwhile, the Water of Nevis (the river passing through the valley) could be heard even louder.
Eventually after getting through this narrow and rocky gorge section, the climb levelled out and we found ourselves in an open valley, and the falls could be seen at the far end of the plato.
I was conscious that it was now getting late in the afternoon and that the light was fading, I needed to get back to the car in reasonable daylight, so the photo options were to stay at the far side of the plato and try to pick out any reasonable images of the falls. It took me30 to 45 minutes to capture my images, with the light now becoming dusk, so I quickly pack up and conditioned my mind to getting back down the Glen to the car as quick as possible but in one piece.
This brings to an end, our waterfall exploits in and around Glencoe, to follow is the blog of how I got to a special river with the help of a fellow landscape photographer.
