Читать книгу The Speyside Way. A Scottish Great Trail, includes the Dava Way and Moray Coast trails онлайн

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Ptolemy tells us that the Romans called the Spey the ‘Tuessis’. The river's modern name is Celtic in origin, possibly meaning ‘hawthorn stream’ or describing its frothing swiftness. The 12th-century manuscript De Situ Albaniae describes it as ‘Magnum et miserabile flumen, quod vocatur Spe’ (‘the large and dangerous river, which is called Spey’). In the early period of Scottish history it provided the boundary between the provinces of Moray and Scotia. FH Groome, in his Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland published in the 1880s, stated that the Spey had little commercial significance – very different from the Spey of today with its important tourist, fly-fishing and whisky industries, not to mention the importance of walking to the present economy.

The River Spey seen from Speybank Walk near Kincraig (Badenoch Way)

At 98 miles long the Spey is the second longest river in Scotland and has three main tributaries, the Fiddich, the Avon and the Feshie. It is the fastest flowing river in Britain, dropping around 600ft (180m) in its last 35 miles to the sea, its force constantly changing the layout of its estuary. Over 400 million years ago the Grampian mountains were formed, but erosion over aeons of time has resulted in the rounded shapes of the Monadhliath, where the very first waters of the Spey flow into Loch Spey, 1150ft (457m) above sea level. During the past couple of million years the great strath (‘broad valley’ in Gaelic) of the Spey was formed by massive glaciers scraping away rock and leaving gravel and sand in its place. The middle section of the valley between Newtonmore and Grantown is today known as Strathspey. Finally, near the sea the Spey passes over sandstone and terminates on the coastal shingle ridges of the wide Spey Bay.