Queen Victoria on Loch Maree.

Queen Victoria on Loch Maree. Queen Victoria stayed at the Loch Maree Hotel from 12 to 18 September 1877. The royal party travelled to Loch Maree from Balmoral by train on 12 September 1877, passing by Inverness and Moray Firth. On 17 September 1877 Queen Victoria visited nearby Slatterdale.

Queen Victoria water colour – A watercolour showing a view of Loch Maree from the dining room of the Loch Maree Hotel.  The Queen describes how she “Sketched again when I came in [from a walk], the lovely views from the windows in the dining room”.

This postcard shows the memorial stone commemorating the visit of Queen Victoria to Loch Maree in 1877. The original wording is in Gaelic. The English translation reads:

The Queen stayed in the Loch Maree Hotel for six nights and enjoyed her visit, which is also commemorated in the name of the Victoria Falls about a mile north of the hotel in Slattadale Forest.

Loch Maree Hotel is situated on the shores of Loch Maree, a fresh water loch extending about 12 miles from Kinlochewe in the direction of Poolewe. Its reputation received a knock in August 1922 when five visitors to the hotel died of botulism poisoning after eating duck paste sandwiches. Though the deaths were deemed accidental, the hotel still holds the unenviable label of having been the location of the worst botulism food poisoning tragedy in Britain. 

The loch became a popular spot for trout fishing after Queen Victoria’s visit, a visit which led to the naming of Victoria Falls, an attractive waterfall in the vicinity of the hotel. In 1893, there was a proposal to build a branch railway from Achnasheen to Aultbea along the south shore of Loch Maree. The railway would have increased Victorian tourist traffic, as well as providing a service for fisheries and the mail and a connection to Stornoway, however the plan was later abandoned.

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