Badenoch the Storylands: Adventure awaits in the hidden corner of the Scottish Highlands packed with high adrenalin fun

You can step through time and immerse yourself in Highland history in Badenoch as easily as you can fly through the air on a zip wire, set your tastebuds alight with a fine dram or come up close to wildlife that call these beautiful parts home, writes Alison Campsie.

You might not know which way to turn after arriving in this little strip of the Highlands with the land offering experiences that will feed your curiosity about this part of the world – past and present – as well as satisfy the adventurous among us and those, too, who just want to feel a little spoiled.

A fine starting point for any traveller to Badenoch is the Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore where you can get under the skin of how people lived and worked here over centuries, the telling free from the sweetened stereotypes of the shortbread tin and which returns the story to those who owned it.

Set up by Isabel F Grant, a wealthy ethnographer whose family line ran through Clan Grant, she was inspired by her travels to Scandinavia where the “homely and the everyday” was protected and celebrated with her vision then emerging to “shelter homely Highland things from destruction”.

Folk legends to whisky, preservation to high adrenaline, this strip of Scotland has it all

A little piece of history

The museum began life on Iona and was christened ‘Am Fasgadh’ – The Shelter – which ultimately moved to the 80-acre site at Newtonmore.

Here you can wander through distinct periods of Highland time, spanning the 1700s to the early 1950s, at this open air site. You’ll find yourself pulled back hundreds of years into the reconstructed Baile Gean township, where the peat smoke rises from the cruck-framed and heather thatched buildings and rural tenant life during the Jacobite era unfolds.

The buildings, which were used for scenes in the television show Outlander, are based on the archaeological remains of Raitts, which was one of the principal townships in the Badenoch area, five miles north-east of the museum, which can be explored on foot. It is worth downloading the Badenoch Storylands app, which offers a helpful guide into the remains of this settlement whose tenants were cleared in the early 1800s. Combining a visit to the museum with a trip to the remains of Raitt puts this powerful story of history and its impact on everyday people right at your feet.

Let the smell of historical camp fires start you on a magical journey through the Highlands of Scotland

Wildcats, capercaillies and tigers

The mountains that cusp Badenoch – from the Monadhliath to the north, to the Grampians to the south and the Cairngorms to the east – are home to some of the rarest species in Scotland including wildcat, capercaillie and red squirrel, with freshwater pearl mussels clinging on in the clear waters of the Spey.

Wildcats have also made their home at the Highland Wildlife Park near Newtonmore at Kincraig, owned by the Royal Zoological Society, where 10 super rare kittens were born in the summer through the Saving Wildcats conservation programme. I couldn’t spy the kittens but when mum Tulla appeared on a cliffside surveying her land, my day was made. The kittens bring the total number born in the programme’s first breeding season to 18.

The park – part safari and part walking tour delivers the unexpected at every turn, not least the mighty Amur Tiger, normally found in Siberia, who appeared completely at one with his densely forested enclosure. The 30 or so snow monkeys are another highlight, their enclosure framed by the mountains beyond with the creatures a joy to watch as they play, groom and share their favourite turnip lunch.

Live the high life

If you want to tap into your own inner monkey, head over to the Alvie Estate, where you can travel through the treetops and across the Alvie Gorge at Zip Adventure. Here, more than 1km of wires will take you over spectacular waterfalls, with the forest lit at night during the winter months for some added high-altitude magic.

If water is more your thing, the Loch Insh Outdoor Centre, in the foothills of the Cairngorms at the lower end of Glen Feshie, will meet your thirst for adventure. Take to an open canoe, or a kayak or perhaps a stand up paddle board to immerse yourself in these gorgeous surroundings and then warm up in the Boathouse restaurant thereafter.

Glen Feshie is also home to some fine walks through the mighty Scots pines, some which have stood watch for more than three centuries. This is land how it was – and how more of it will be in the future as reclusive billionaire landowner Anders Povlsen Holch – works to restore habitats, plant native trees and reverse decades of overgrazing by deer.

After much fresh air, perhaps a dram might be in order? No visit to the Highlands can come to an end without a distillery stop, with Speyside and Dalwhinnie distillers at hand, where the elements of this landscape coalesce in the finest of drops, will stir an inner warmth for this place called Badenoch.

Find out more at visitcairngorms.com/inspire-me/badenoch-the-storylands