Culloden Battlefield Tour: Walk in the Footsteps of the Jacobites

Culloden Moor still carries the weight of April 1746, when the last pitched battle on British soil shattered the Jacobite cause. On this walking tour, you'll retrace the two front lines as they formed across this exposed moorland. You'll also hear how exhaustion, bad terrain, and command confusion doomed Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highlanders against the Duke of Cumberland's government troops.

The tour starts at the Culloden Battlefield car park, beside the National Trust for Scotland visitor centre. From there, you'll walk out onto the moor itself, passing the red flags marking Cumberland's line and the blue flags marking the Jacobite position. Along the way, you'll pass through the Leanach and Culwhinniac Enclosures, reconstructed stone dykes that proved decisive when government cavalry breached them and turned the Jacobite flank.

You'll stand at the Well of the Dead, where Clan MacGillivray's chief fell amid the battle's fiercest fighting, and learn how myths about Scotland versus England, or Catholic versus Protestant, obscure the battle's real causes. You'll also hear of the Appin Banner's narrow escape from capture. The tour ends at Old Leanach Cottage, the battlefield's wartime field hospital, with a final clifftop view across the entire moor.

On this 75-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• See the Culloden Cairn, erected in 1881 to mark the ground between the two opposing armies
• Visit the Clan Fraser stone, a site made newly popular by its connection to the Outlander television series
• Stand among the Clan Donald markers on the left flank, where boggy ground slowed the Highland Charge
• Read the Field of the English stone, a piece of Victorian-era Jacobite propaganda
• Hear how no quarter orders turned victory into a brutal, lawless aftermath
• Find out why the Duke of Cumberland earned the nickname Butcher Cumberland

By the time you reach Old Leanach Cottage, you'll understand exactly how one chaotic afternoon reshaped the Scottish Highlands for generations.