We needed a short hike to break up our journey back to Glasgow so I googled the best hikes near Fort William and the walk to Steall Falls was top of the list. Steall Falls is the UK’s 2nd highest waterfall at 120 metres and features in a couple of the Harry Potter films). We had previously done the hike about 4 years ago (but we couldn’t really remember it so thought we may as well return.)

The road to the car park passed the starting point for climbing Ben Nevis and the campsite – which brought back lovely memories of when we camped and climbed a few years ago. We also drove passed a field with highland cattle and could just make out people in the distance walking down the mountain. We had teased the kids that we were going to climb Nevis again (and despite it being about 1.30pm and when we climbed we set off at about 6.30am) they believed us!!!! Izzy even commented that she would take an Instagram picture of herself at the top.

The trail started off quite easy with a nice path but it wasn’t long before we had to walk over some rocks and cross a waterfall. There were also some areas with steep drops and warning signs in places where the path was falling away and cones marking the edge.

The views from the path down the valley were spectacular!

It wasn’t a long hike and we soon we reached a meadow and could see the falls in the distance although the rain started so we all put our waterproofs on.

We reached the river where there is a rope bridge which you can cross. Tom and Izzy decided to have a go and Tom made it half way across – although wasn’t helped by Izzy standing at one end shaking the bridge to make it wobble!

They had to get off the bridge as a group of hikers coming from the other side of the river needed to cross. We chilled for a bit whilst the kids played in the river (and Izzy lost her footing so got her bottoms soaked) but as it had stopped raining the midges came out in force! We covered ourselves in bug spray but the walk back was awful – it was the worst we had experienced all holiday.

The hike was 3.7km and had an elevation gain of 97m.