Morton’s Way and the Elf House

Sean Mulligan

So this was one of those days, Saturday morning, early June, still half asleep, the rain falling, and with intonations not to be late home I headed out to further explore Glen Fiddich. The intention being to follow the river in for a bit, then cross the high moor, reaching the upper Glen then make my way back down riding mostly alongside the river.

I started from my house in Keith onto the B9014 to Dufftown, then turned off onto the A941 which, despite being an A road, I find pleasant to ride. It climbs through forest toward the Pass of the Glacks of Balloch, but before reaching this I turned right into Glen Fiddich. Through the open gates (I’ve seen them locked) and past the gate house. Here the track is tarmac and climbs quickly.

I rode past a metal deer heavily pockmarked with buck shot. The road continued through mixed woodland with the river to my left and a view ahead towards Hill of Glen Roads shrouded in mist. The tarmac got progressively more broken and pot-holed, and the road turned to mud and gravel.

I turned left into the now semi ruined Fiddich Lodge which is composed of various cottages and farm buildings. I think a gamekeeper and his dog team still reside in a cottage, this is prime grouse and deer country. I kept on past the old farm buildings looking for a right turn to take me up onto the high moor.

I found it, mostly single track, bouldery with some steep zig-zag climbing, appropriately this track leads to the top of Hill of Glen Roads. I had to get off now and then to push, and during this time the rain had picked up and the mist was getting thick. I kept checking my GPS as I didn’t want to miss the turnoff onto Mortons Way and there seemed to be some land rover tracks not shown on the OS, so it would be easy to head off on the wrong one. On the way I spotted a large herd of deer, they headed off up an adjacent hill.

As I had hoped the track comprising Mortons Way was of better quality, and rides well to start with. However after a while there came another section of steep zig zagging and more bike pushing was needed, but it was wild looking, and a bit spooky in the now very thick mist.

Mortons Way reaches nearly to the top of Corrhabbie hill at 740 m, it then drops steeply to the left and back into upper Glen Fiddich, at this point you turn left to head back down. Or turn right to follow the track to the end of Glen Fiddich, through Glen Suie and Glen Livit reaching the hamlet of Tomnavoulin, I have previously done this route and would recommended it.

Riding back down the Glen was nice, I followed the river, and along the way forded a few small tributary streams which were quite high after the rain. In one place the river Fiddich itself had to be forded and after looking at it and pondering for a bit, I ended up half riding and half wading across.

It’s on this section of the ride that I passed the curiously named Elf House. Queen Victoria who visited the area in 1867 writes in her journal, A Highland Life, "a narrow steep path overhanging a burn leads to a cave which the duke said went a long way under the hill. It is called the Elf House." On this trip I did not want to stop at the Elf House but rode on till I was well past.

I’m going to digress from the bike riding narrative and become a bit Gothic here. The first time I came to look specifically for the feature marked on the OS as the Elf House was back in May 2011. It’s a bit off the track and tucked behind some contours and looked to be pretty well concealed so I was using GPS-SatMap to aid with location. It can normally track well in hilly ground and I had plenty of satellite fixes, but as I got near the Elf House it completely lost the fix and it pointed me instead a few hundred metres up the hill behind.

Anyway I managed to locate it with the map and after some scrambling followed a small steam up to it. The entrance was pretty overgrown with shrubs and small trees. I managed to see in for a bit of a way and at the floor of the cave there was a deep pool of water. I have to say I felt uneasy at this point and experienced inertia and vertigo, I don’t know why, the place just seemed to have an eeriness about it. I took a photo of the cave entrance but didn’t want to spend any time there.

But soon after fording the river I made a right turn to ride through the Forest of Fiddich and head towards the Pass of the Glacks of Balloch where the forest track meets the A941. This would be an alternative start point if the lodge gates where I started from were locked. From here its a nice run, and pretty much downhill all the way to Dufftown, a great cafe stop here is the Coffee Pot in the square, Dufftown is also where they distill the world famous Glenfiddich whisky.

Sean Mulligan
(Kilmorack, Scotland)