- Location: Queens View Visitor Centre, Pitlochry PH16 5NR
- Opening times: 24 Hours
- Entry: Free
- Access: Onsite car parking; £2.00 charge applies during ‘office hours’.
Whenever one sees the words Queen’s View in print, they are invariably immediately followed by phrases such as “one of the most iconic views in Scotland” or “one of the most photographed views”. And those plaudits are well earned, for the Queen’s View is, to use the vernacular, a cracker. It is also a stoater. And best of all, if you drive a car it provides a huge reward for zero effort. It simply involves taking the B8019 along the north shore of Loch Tummel, parking in at the clearly signed car park, and then walking a mere 200m to the view point.
The view itself looks west up the length of Loch Tummel, all 11km of it, towards the distinctive cone shape of Schiehallion, the ‘fairy hill of the Caledonians’, where in 1774 – 1776 Neville Maskelyne conducted his experiments to determine the weight of the world. I climbed this with my family about ten years ago, and although it was a straightforward walk I remember the debris strewn summit being particularly exhausting. Today it is not just Schiehallion’s imposing height or instantly recognisable shape that makes it stand out. While the trees and fields looks velvety green in the early evening sun and the water reflects the golden sky, Schiehallion stubbornly maintains its winter coat of white and grey, a bit like the only person that came to the party in fancy dress. Far beyond it, but clearly visible, are the mountains of Glencoe. It is, as they say, some view.
But whose view is it? Who is the queen in Queen’s View? Queen Victoria famously visited here in 1866 and automatically assumed it was named for her, which is exactly the sense of entitlement one gets when one rules the biggest empire the world has ever known and has a period in human history named after her. But the name was in place long before Victoria and her ego came along. The Walk Highlands website proposes Mary, Queen of Scots, but offers no evidence or reason. The general consensus is that the queen in question is Isabella of Mar, first wife of King Robert Bruce. Isabella’s connection to this spot is a bit sketchy, to say the least. She is said to have hid from the English here, or simply to have rested here on her travels, but there is no historical of her ever having visited this area at all. Further damning this theory is the small fact that Isabella was never a queen, having died a full decade before Bruce was crowned in 1306 (the cause of Isabella’s death is unrecorded, but it was possibly while giving birth to Marjorie, whose tomb we visited in Paisley Abbey).
Which queen it was is something of a moot point, as what Victoria, Mary, or Isabella saw is significantly different to what the visitor today sees. The construction of the Clunie Dam in the mid-twentieth century led to the water level rising 17ft (5m) higher, which, according to the Canmore website, effectively doubled the length of the loch and created islands that were once part of the shoreline. Looking at online photographs of the loch in the 1800s, it is fair to say that the view that greets the 21st tourist trumps that of their 19th, 16th and 13th century predecessors.
When Annie and I visit early in the evening of the last Sunday of winter we have the place to ourselves, but the Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust website hails Queen’s View as one of Perthshire’s top attractions, drawing over 150,000 visitors per year. Alas, that wasn’t enough to save the visitor centre, café and gift shop, which a sign informed us were all closed ‘until further notice’. That’s a real shame, as the forlorn empty buildings create a poor first impression of what is indeed one of the most iconic views in Scotland.
Destination or Diversion?
Queen’s View is stunning and is well worth making the ten miles round trip from the A9 to see, but it is no more than a stunning diversion, something to fit in with the rest of your day.
