CORRIEYAIRACK PASS ON MOTORBIKES

In 173 I General Wade began building the road; it was no easy task. Some 500 men were employed on the project, the road runs for 22 miles and was completed in about six months, a feat that would be impressive even today with sophisticated earth-moving machinery.

In a later century it was used extensively by drovers, herd­ing large numbers of cattle to the trysts or markets at Falkirk and Crief.

This famous section of the military road from Dalwhinnie to Fort Augustus  opened up the Highlands after the failure of the Jacobite Rising of 1715, many Highlanders of the time did not like the roads, they seemed to take away their privacy and render them more vulnerable to the English authorities

The summit of the pass rises to 2,507 ft, and on the east of the approach had seventeen traverses, each was buttressed on the outside by a stone wall 10 ft to 15 ft high and flanked on the inside by a drain, It was first put to use in any major way when Prince Charles Edward Stuart led his army through it, crossing from west to east after raising his standard in August 1745.

The pass-road remained in general use for about 100 years, but Highland cattle-drovers, who had used the pass long before Wade, continued to drive their beasts through it until the end of the 19th cent.

Today the old military road no longer in use, but can be accessed to walk the distance involved is some 14 miles with a climb of nearly 500m to the highest point at 770m,.

The Corrieyairack has everything, from the gentle meanderings of the upper River Spey, through the pass itself amid high rolling moorland, and down by the side of Glen Tarff to the A82 near Fort Augustus.