Walking and Climbing
Croft Holidays, located at the Southern part of Badenoch and Strathspey, is simply perfect for walking and cycling holidays. The village is located in the Cairngorms National Park, an area renowned for the variety of walking available. The Walk Highlands website has a selection of walks with maps and descriptions. See https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/cairngorms/kingussie.shtml. Since it is close to the geographical centre of Scotland, you can also reach many other walking areas in the Highlands. We supply local walking guides and some maps.
A new long distance route, the East Highland Way, runs from Fort William to Aviemore through Newtonmore
The Newtonmore Wildcat trail, 11km, passes 200m from the cottages. Walking guides for the trail are in the cottages. Some of our favourite other walks are:
- Farleitter Crag and Uath Lochans, 4km
- Loch an Eilein, Rothiemurchus, 7km
- Meall a Bhuachaille and Creagan Gorm, 16km
- Carn Dearg, Carn Sgulain & A’Chailleach, 25km
Newtonmore is an excellent centre for climbing mountains in the Cairngorms, Monadhliath ranges, Creag Meagaidh and even Ben Nevis. Walkers can enjoy the many Munros, Corbetts and Grahams in the area. Rock climbs are listed on the Ukclimbing website : https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/. This site mentions all the local crags and mountains. Best known locally is Creag Dubh on the edge of Newtonmore, but there are many more particularly around Cairngorm.
Cycling
The Newtonmore area is a paradise for cycling, both road cycling and mountain biking. On road we recommend:
- Croft Holidays – Glen Truim – Laggan – Newtonmore 19 miles
- Newtonmore – Laggan – Dalwhinnie – Newtonmore 32 miles
- Croft Holidays – Kincraig – Insh – Kingussie – Newtonmore 21 miles
- Newtonmore – Aviemore – Newtonmore 30 or 33 miles depending on route taken
The long distance Sustrans route 7 from Carlisle to Inverness passes through the village.
There is an unlimited number of mountain biking routes locally, some of which start from the cottages. The area between Kingussie and Kincraig with Glen Tromie and Glen Feshie is a true mountain biking mecca. Other biking is in the Monadhliath, the Ardverikie estate, and Rothiemurchus. The newly completed Speyside way route is an all abilities trail between Newtonmore and Carrbridge. There are also pump tracks in several of the local villages and the dedicated trail centres of Laggan Wolftrax and Glenlivet are nearby.
Guests can store their bicycles in a newly constructed external bike shed, where we also have a selection of bike tools and maintenance equipment. This was kindly funded by Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland in 2022.