Timber Walk

The walk takes you down towards the shore of Loch Awe then along the lochside track.

From the shore you can see the remains of a crannog, an Iron Age settlement one of over 40 along the lochside. These were circular thatched buildings on stilts over the loch, which housed both families and their animals.

At the furthest point of the walk is MacKenzie's Grove where some of the largest conifers on the west coast are being allowed to grow to maturity. The trees here were planted around 1922.

Much of the surrounding Inverliever Forest blew down in a tremendous gale on the 15th January 1968. MacKenzie's Grove sits in a small sheltered pocket where the trees survived.

The damp atmosphere of the grove provides the ideal habitat for the wide variety of ferns and lichens, and echos the native woods of the west coast of America from where the Sitka spruce originates.