Inverlochy Castle

Old Inverlochy Castle, not to be confused with the Victorian hotel of the same name up the road, is one of the most complete castles of the 1200s in Scotland, built about 1280 by the Red Comyns, lords of Badenoch and Lochaber, to command the southern end of the Great Glen. A quadrangular curtain wall more than three metres thick with a round tower at each corner, the largest called Comyn's Tower, stands within a wide moat on three sides. It fell to Robert the Bruce after he crushed the Comyns in 1308; in 1431 the Earl of Mar's royal army was routed here by some 800 clansmen of the Lord of the Isles, and in 1645 Montrose destroyed a Covenanting army of 3,000 below its walls. The castle itself is closed for conservation and seen through protective fencing, but the grounds are open, with information boards and views to Ben Nevis; reviewers walk out from Fort William in about half an hour on the Great Glen Way path.