About Rogie Falls
Rogie Falls was actually a bonus waterfall that Julie and I hadn’t even counted on seeing when we made plans to visit Scotland in August 2014. In fact, we didn’t even know it existed! However, after seeing some literature about it while in our travels along with noticing a road sign when we were passing by it on the long drive to Durness as well as getting a verbal mention by some local Scots who were on a boat tour with me at Loch Glencoul (further up the Ross-shire in the far northwest highlands), I finally decided to capitalize on some extra time that we had on our last full day in Inverness and seek out this seemingly well-known waterfall that somehow eluded us in our trip research.
Apparently, the claim to fame of this roughly 30ft waterfall on the river Black Water was that it was a well-known route of salmon making the arduous swim from the North Sea towards spawning grounds in this part of the river. A salmon ladder (basically an alternate man-made watercourse with less severe drops running alongside the main cascade; something we had seen a lot of in Norway) was built to make it easier for the salmon to continue their journey further upstream to lay eggs or to spawn. I wasn’t fortunate enough to see any of the salmon do their thing even though I was well within the typical July-September spawning run, but the scenery here was quite nice as well.
From the well-signed and fairly spacious car park (see directions below), I took the short Salmon Trail, which was said to be only a half-mile circuit. I walked the circuit in a clockwise manner (as it wasn’t very obvious at first how to do the trail going in the other direction). The path was a pleasant nature walk partially shaded amongst the trees of the Forest of Ross as it eventually went downhill towards the banks of Black Water. It was barely 10-15 minutes before I ultimately was able to see the Rogie Falls as well as the suspension bridge spanning Black Water.
As I was walking the bouncy suspension bridge, that was when I noticed there was a gate in the middle of it leading down closer to the salmon ladder, which was right next to and below the far side of the suspension bridge. I had to be careful here as there were some exposure to dropoffs plunging right into the river. When I had my fill of taking frontal photos of Rogie Falls from the suspension bridge, I then continued along a rocky and not-so-obvious path hugging the fencing that continued further downstream to the left of the suspension bridge as I was getting off of it. After another 5-10 minutes, I then found myself at a more distant lookout called the Raven’s Crag, which allowed me to look back at Rogie Falls fronted by the suspension bridge. The rest of the walk was gently uphill, and before I knew it, I was back at the car park from its southern end. Overall, I spent about 50 minutes away from the car, but I took my time taking photos and just enjoying the nature walk. The time commitment here could easily be as little as 20-30 minutes.
From Inverness, I took the A9 roughly 6-7 miles over the Beauly Firth to the roundabout with the A835 road near Tore. Going left onto the A835, I continued about another 13.5 miles to the well-signed car park on the right for Rogie Falls. This car park was about 1.6 miles past the town of Contin and nearly 8 miles past the A835/A862 junction at Maryburgh. This drive took me roughly 35 minutes (including some rush hour traffic in Inverness).
For some geographic context, our base of Inverness was 65 miles (about 90-120 minutes drive) northeast of Fort William, 155 miles (3.5 hours drive) north of Edinburgh and 169 miles (3.5 hours drive) north of Glasgow.
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Left to right sweep of the falls following along Black Water before ending towards the suspension bridge spanning the river
Sweep of the falls as seen from the suspension bridge spanning the Black Water before ending with a sweep of the salmon ladder
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