B9007

The B9007 is a spectacular cross-country B-road across Dava Moor, before dropping into the valley of the Findhorn.

Route

Dava Moor

The route starts on the A938 at Duthil, in the valley of the River Dulnain east of Carrbridge, and immediately starts climbing as it winds northwards. It quickly narrows, although is never quite single track as it climbs alongside the Duthil Burn, with blocks of forestry to the east and the open moorland of the valley floor to the west. A series of short straights belie its origins as a military road built by Major Caulfeild in the 1750s. These straights cannot be described as undulating, as they rise and fall like the crests of waves on the sea in places, but they steadily climb across the moorland through patches of srcubby trees and on towards a distinctively shaped hill ahead.

A sudden kink to the right sees the open moorland around the headwaters of the Duthil Burn disappear, and the road starts to snake through a narrower valley and into a steep sided pass. Around another slight kink, the view ahead opens up and the road can be seen climbing round a narrow gully and up onto the moorland beyond, where it reaches a summit of around 384m. The road then starts to descend, not particularly steeply, and as the views ahead open up, Lochindorb with its ruinous castle can be seen lying in a hollow in the moors. The B9007 avoids the loch, with a minor road - the first public road met since the start - turning right to skirt the loch shores. A more sinuous route leads through patchy forestry as the route follows the Tomlachlan Burn downstream.

A sharper right kink sees the B9007 finally leave Caulfeild's road behind, and soon afterwards it leaves the moor and enters a small wood. Soon afterwards another old military road is crossed at a crossroads, where only the second roadside building stands. (The left turn leads to Dulsie Bridge.) The rest of the route was largely built by Thomas Telford in the 1810s after he took over responsibility for the military road network and tried to reshape it into something more useful for the general public. The road continues to descend gently through a mixture of forestry and woodland, to reach Ferness and a sharply angled crossroads on the A939.

Crossing the narrow Bridge of Logie

Continuing north, the route becomes much windier as it climbs slightly above the steep valley of the River Findhorn. Lush green fields sit between more blocks of forestry, and the road becomes quite narrow as it winds around some tighter bends over a small burn at Airdrie. Straightening up, the road passes through a couple of miles of forestry with only occasional glimpses of fields between the trees. At Relugas, a left turn drops steeply down to cross the river at Daltulich Bridge, while the B9007 runs parallel to, but high above it through Relugas Wood. The road then descends, and on the inside of a U bend of almost 180 degrees, there is space to park for a short walk down into the Randolph's Leap in the Findhorn gorge, where a fugitive from the Earl of Moray is said to have leapt across the narrow river channel in the 14th century. Some more sharp bends take the road over the narrow Bridge of Logie across the tributary River Divie. A few hundred yards further on, after a fairly steep climb, the road reaches Logie where it ends at a T-junction on the A940.

History

As noted above, the origins of this route lie with two great Highland road builders, Major Caulfeild and Thomas Telford. Caulfeild was responsible for the southern part of the route, which was built in c1753 as a connection between General Wade's old main road over Drumochter (now largely the A9) and his new main road south from Fort George through the Cairngorms to Coupar Angus. Wade's road was left at Carrbridge, with the new link initially following the A938 route along the north bank of the Dulnain before turning north at Duthil and climbing over the moors. The junction with the A938 used to be a triangular one - oddly, only the eastern leg was B9007, with the western leg being unclassified, although the western side was the more natural through route - but it was realigned as a conventional T-junction somewhere around 1990. Otherwise the B9007 appears to faithfully follow Caulfeild's line across the summit.

The addition of passing places and a couple of laybys in modern times has probably coincided with a couple of adjustments to the sharper bends along the route, but otherwise the old and new roads are the same as far as the right kink above the crossroads at Burnside. Here, the old road can be seen continuing ahead through a gate surrounded by heather to reach the Tomlachlan Burn near Dunearn Lodge, although the crossing point has been lost by the construction of the house and changes to the river channel, as evidenced by the old military bridge which now stands high and dry on the east bank of the burn. This was the junction with the Caulfeild's new main road, which the B9007 crosses at the Burnside Crossroads as it runs east-west between Dulsie Bridge and Dava Bridge.

The remainder of the route, therefore, was built by Thomas Telford as part of his commission on Highland Roads and Bridges. It was built in conjunction with a section of the A939 through Ferness Crossroads, which also connected up parts of the old military road network. The route followed by Telford seems narrower and twistier than Caulfeild's, but this is probably largely due to the forested landscape as opposed to the open moorlands of the southern part of the route. At the junction at Logie, the B9007 meets the A940, another of Caulfeild's roads, and one which was improved over long stretches by Telford. This junction was realigned at some time to remove an acute angle with the A940.

Apart from the junction changes at each end, the line of the road remains the same as when first classified in 1922.

The 1922 MOT Road List defines this route as: Duthil - Ferness - Forres