The funicular railway at Cairngorm Mountain and Loch an Eilein

We went up the Cairngorm funicular railway today to the UK’s highest restaurant and bar – Ptarmigan – which is at just over 1,000m. It was our first ride on the funicular which opened in February this year after being closed in August 2023 for safety reasons. The work required to get it back in action took longer than expected owing to the exposed and difficult mountain location and the issues being more extensive than first thought.

A funicular railway consists of two carriages connected via a pulley and cantilever system allowing the downward travelling carriage to pull the second carriage up the mountain. The train is still powered but less power is required to get to the top with this method. It’s a single track with a small fork part-way down allowing the two carriages to pass each other.

There was a dearth of snow on the mountain as you can see and far less than I would expect for March but it was 10C at the base station which is very warm. Nonetheless the views are magnificent all the way up and from the restaurant at the top. The exhibition centre and gift shop hasn’t opened yet but I believe they will follow soon.

There’s a lovely view of Loch Morlich from the top. It looks very big from a distance.

It was a bit windy at the top.

Afterwards we walked the beaver trail to Loch an Eilein starting from Aviemore. It took about 2 hours on good, fairly flat paths. Loch an Eilein is Gaelic for loch of the island as there’s a small island in the middle with a castle ruin.

You can’t get more Scottish than a castle ruin in the middle of a loch.

There are toilets at the loch with soap and heating. The beaver walk is a lovely forest walk and the pathway at Loch en Eilein is even better with views of the loch and surrounding hills; you can walk all the way around the loch. We didn’t see any beavers on the walk but they were only reintroduced to the area in December 2023 after an absence of 400 years. They became extinct in the UK due to humans hunting them for meat and fur but have been making a comeback over the past two decades. The Rothiemurchus Estate in Aviemore was approved as a release site and last summer the first kits were born. I suspect the population will do well here and grow rapidly, providing important habitats for other species.