Badenoch’s geographical location has shaped its landscape and history. The mountains and rivers of the Cairngorms National Park created its uplands, straths and glens and also carved out the routes which have given it its strategic importance as a thoroughfare for people for centuries.

Badenoch’s shimmering and ever-changing water – its rivers, floodplains, lochs and marshes – inspired its Gaelic name (“the drowned lands”), and has created a landscape which supports life and inspires people’s admiration and wonder.

Movement is an important influence on life in Badenoch, be it the area’s ever-moving and evolving rivers, the advance and retreat of snow and ice, or the people who, since prehistoric times, have passed through Badenoch on their journeys north, south, east and west.

Badenoch’s landscapes and wildlife, which are recognised internationally as being special and precious, have motivated lots of different people to work to understand and protect them, placing the area at the heart of Scotland’s wildlife conservation story.

Badenoch’s climate and landscape has bred generations of resourceful, tenacious and spirited people who have learned how to wrest a living from these beautiful but often harsh uplands.

Over the centuries and continuing today, Badenoch has inspired local legends, stories, literature, music, art – and, of course, a love of shinty – as well as attracting visiting people such as artists, writers and film-makers. These all combine to create a special local culture which everyone – locals and visitors alike – can share and enjoy.