Sight · Cairngorms National Park
Four sculptural seats face Corgarff Castle across a wide valley.
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The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Cairngorms Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Cairngorms National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Cairngorms audio tourRecorded for this place
The Watchers and the Standing Stone“You're approaching The Watchers, four hooded seats beside the Lecht Road, looking toward Corgarff Castle. Pull into the nearby parking area for a short stop. The steel hoods shelter larch seats on this exposed hillside.”
Plays as you drive up to The Watchers in the Parkwolf Cairngorms Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
The Watchers are four hooded sculptural seats beside the A939 Lecht Road, about 637 metres above sea level. They sit on an open hillside with a wide view toward Corgarff Castle. This is a short stop for the unusual seats and the landscape around them; there’s a nearby parking area, so you can pull in and take a proper look.
John Kennedy made the rust-colored cowls from Corten steel, with seats in Scottish larch. Each hood is designed as shelter for the wind- and snow-swept hillside. Look for the pale standing stone nearby too: Louise Gardiner’s A Moment in Time lines up a view toward Corgarff Castle. Together, the two works make more of a stop than the seats alone.
The castle in the distance was first built by the Forbes clan in 1550. Seeing that old stronghold across the valley from Kennedy and Gardiner’s newer artworks gives this roadside stop a nice span of Cairngorms history.
The A939 crosses exposed high ground at the Lecht, where snow gates can close the road after heavy snow or when wind blows snow off the hills. Check the road conditions before setting out in winter.
Wildlife
159 sightingsRed DeerMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
63 sightingsReindeerMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
102 sightingsOspreyMost seen around 5 PMSighting map
37 sightingsBlack GrouseMost seen around 4 AMSighting map
72 sightingsRed GrouseMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
82 sightingsPine MartenMost seen around 9 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Cairngorms. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Keep exploring
EasyLecht Mine Trail1.6 km · 45 min · 5.8 km awayA short valley walk ends at a restored Highland crushing mill.
ModerateMona Gowan from Strathdon11.7 km · 3.8 hr · 8 km awayA steady hill climb ends at a huge Jubilee cairn.Parkwolf’s Cairngorms ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
