Glenurquhart to Clava Cairns GPX Motorcycle or Car Route

From Glen Urquhart you travel by car or motor bike 6 miles east of Inverness.

 Sign posted from the B9091, 300 yards east of Culloden Battlefield and visitors centre.

This was were the final confrontation of the Jacobite up rising took place on the 16th April 1745, you can walk on the battle field, explore the interactive visitor centre, view fascinating artefacts from both sides of the confrontation, and experience the battle in our immersive surround cinema, well worth a visit.

The Cairns are about 4,000 years old, and were built to house the dead.

The Clava Cairns comprise of part of two Bronze Age cemeteries.

Balnuaran of Clava and Milton of Clava, the landscape was an important place for ritual and burial activities in the Bronze Age.

The cairns at Balnuaran have a central chamber, with two outer cairns and entrance passages, the chamber in the centre one is enclosed and each cairn surrounded by a ring of standing stones, It would have taken a large number of people to build the Cairns, and many arduous hours to complete, the burial chambers were emptied long ago, but still worth the visit, Later burials at the site suggest continued significance for over a millennia.

The Clava Cairns are a type-site for a group of around 50 similar cairns found only in the region of the Moray Firth and Inverness.

The sites also contain a range of prehistoric burial monuments and the remains of a medieval chapel.

The Cairns are Free to visit and open year-round, with Free parking.