Healing At Alladale Wilderness Reserve

The first blissful shock is the water. Plunging into a mountain rock pool at Alladale Wilderness Reserve, the cold slices through the skin and takes your breath away. Fed by pure Highland streams, it is clear as glass. If you are lucky, you might even spot or find yourself swimming, as I did, with a wild salmon, a bracing reminder that this is not a spa pool but nature in its rawest form. The chill reaches bone-deep, yet what follows is exhilaration—skin tingling, heart racing, the mind utterly present. 

The second shock is more of a welcome surprise. It’s May and there is not a cloud in the sky and this lasts for the entire duration of my stay. The air tastes of peat and pine, the sky the brightest, clearest blue I have ever seen. In this moment I belong nowhere else but here.

Located in the central Scottish Highlands north-west of Inverness, Alladale Wilderness Reserve spans 23,000 acres of glens, rivers, ancient woodlands, and young trees pushing skyward. When Paul Lister acquired what was then a depleted sporting estate in 2003, he found landscapes stripped of much of their native forest, peatlands degraded, wildlife diminished. His mission: to help the land restore what was lost, and in doing so offer people a place to reconnect—body, mind, spirit—with something wilder, deeper than themselves.

On our first afternoon we are guided by Alladale Reserve Manager, Innes MacNeill, on a stunning two-hour walk to Croick Church via Glencalvie Falls.  But first, he introduces us to the land. “A restored woodland and a healthy ecosystem is central to our vision for Alladale. We have been working hard on this for two decades, so it’s rewarding for us to see the fruits of our labour. The hard work will continue. Our ethos at Alladale is simple: we will leave the land in better condition than we found it.” 

So what exactly has been achieved at Alladale? The quick answer is an enormous amount. Trees, ferns, and mosses are returning. Native saplings of Scots pine, birch, rowan, willow and alder have been planted in their thousands. Peat bogs are being repaired. Wildlife, including red squirrels and wildcats, are finding safe havens once more.

Walking through the glens with Innes, the ground is spongy after the recent rain with shafts of bright sunlight piercing through the birch and pine. I ask Innes what makes the ground so spongy, and he explains that it’s to do with the restoration of peatlands. Layers of moist, partially decomposed vegetation retain water, creating a soft and cushion-like ground. 

We spot a herd of red deer in the glen and Innes tells me that deer numbers were once in the high 20s or 30 per square kilometre. Now, because they control the deer, the forest has space to grow. “We are the only country in Europe without an apex predator. But you’re looking at some alternative apex predators right now,” he says pointing at us all. “There’s nothing else to manage the deer, so that’s where the problems lie.” The approach isn’t romantic naivety, but a careful choreography: fencing, planting, managing populations, letting nature reassert itself.

The experience, however, is more than the appreciation of a remote wilderness. Alladale’s newly opened Willow Centre is a sanctuary for modern wellbeing: a light-filled space for yoga, sound healing, community, and stillness. Nestled into the glen, it somehow manages to feel both earthy and otherworldly — a reflection of everything Alladale stands for.

The next morning I find myself standing barefoot on the studio floor, soft light pooling around me as we begin a ‘Yoga Flow’ with Donnah, one of the Wellbeing guides. Outside, the hills rise up around us in quiet grandeur. Inside, breathing meets movement in a space that feels designed for release. Later in the day I join a foraging walk led by Donnah, who explains that her work for guests at Alladale is a weaving together of sound bath and yoga, wild foraging, and forest bathing. “The idea is to help bring guests into deeper communion with the wild,” she explains. 

I am lucky enough to experience several more of Donnah’s ‘embodied’ experiences. Notably a sound bath back in the Willow Centre, where the sound of her gonging merges with the gentle sound of snoring. Many guests tell Donna they arrive exhausted, anxious, and carrying the strains of city life. They leave with their shoulders relaxed, breathing deeper, and with their sense of time slowed. The combination of healing time in the Willow Centre and being close to the land is a powerful healer.

Guests arrive seeking many things: rest, adventure, silence, or sound. Some begin with hikes, others with yoga sessions, and there are guided mountain bike trails and a pickleball court. Wild swimming in rock pools, meditation and sound baths allow the mind to expand. With no phone signal in many parts, a rare quiet descends. You become aware of breathing patterns and heartbeats. Even the distant call of a cuckoo is a constant companion throughout my stay. And as a backdrop to the whole experience are the green shades of Spring as buds burst into life all around.

On our foraging walk, I listen to Donnah explaining the subtle flavours of wood sorrel; how bog myrtle was once used to scent bedding and can ward off midges; that the sap of the birch tree is a gentle tonic for fatigue and rich in vitamins and minerals; how juniper berries crushed into stews or teas can aid digestion; and that heather flowers make a soothing infusion to ease restlessness. 

The accommodation at Alladale is designed to support the inward shift. Whether in the main Victorian manor house with its open fireplaces and sweeping views, or in smaller hideaway lodges tucked into the landscape. The comforts are real but never over-stated. The interiors echo the land: timber, stone, natural fibres. You feel sheltered yet expansive.

Walking through the remaining trees of an ancient forest one afternoon, we pause beneath an immense pine, its bark twisted and thick with time. “That one’s around 470 years old,” says Innes. “It would have seen wolves in its lifetime before they became extinct in Scotland.” These so-called ‘granny pines’ stand like elders on the land — ancient, solitary, bearing witness to a wilder Scotland where humans and wolves once hunted side by side.

On our last day I am up at dawn, hungry for one last taste of this wellbeing paradise. I find myself tracing the river’s edge, where young Scots pine and birch trees stand like sentinels, the scent of pine heavy in the late Spring air. Was that an eagle’s distant cry? It’s here I sense a profound invitation to remember what wildness feels like. To let go of everything that’s overworked, overscheduled, overstimulated. To reawaken the parts of ourselves that wait for quiet, space, breath.

Alladale is more than landscape. It’s a living vision. A sanctuary for ecological renewal and inner restoration. A place where the pulse of the land becomes your own.

DISCOVER: alladale.com