Active Highs

Active Highs is the story of love, water and adventure. To understand this statement, we have to say that this watersport company, which offers a great number of different activities like white water rafting, canyoning or paddleboarding among others in Loch Oich and the privileged lands of Fort Williams and Fort Augustus (Scotland), was founded by Andy Burton in 2012.

Andy fell in love with climbing mountains and kayaking when he was just a child and went to the best places in the north of England when he was a little boy. After that, he turned his passion into his professional career, got trained and participated in several competitions in France or Austria until he finally decided to open his own business for sharing his love for watersports adventures with local people or anyone around the world who want to feel the exhilarating emotions that he feels.

Thus, located in Loch Oich, a unique area in the Scottish Highland between Caledonian Canal (popular for being the path to the Scandinavian zone) and Great Glen (considered one of the best places in the whole city of Inverness for practising water and hill sports), Active Highs is open from 9 am to 9 pm and uses what nature has given us to make you feel happy and choose the best sport option that suits you depending on your mood or time of the year.

Taking advantage of River Garry and River Oich, we can offer splendid activities like rafting or canoeing tours. We're also pretty close to Loch Ness, so you can pay a visit while you come here or before going home and check if you see the popular monster and, if you want to spend the night in town and know a little more about our hometown, we're just a few minutes away from the Great Glen Hostel, a beautiful red stone cottage where you can rest in comfort and enjoy their self-catering meals with local products.

What are you waiting for to discover one of our activities in Active Highs and come with your family, group of friends, your couple or on your own to Lock Oich to have one of the best experiences in your life?

The Highlands, the breathtaking zone of Scotland which is the best place for practising sports. But not any sports, but canyoning and here, at Active Highs, a company that has been offering different canyoning activities since 2012, knows it very well.

In consequence, we have designed different plans, for instance our canyoning tour around Ben Nevis or our canyoning session for half a day, for groups of families, colleagues, boyfriends or even for you alone.

As you know, canyoning is a very long tradition around the globe. They say that it was born in the highest areas of Europe, at the Alpines. Others state that the origin is found in the valleys of America where locals use it for exploring their land. No matter how, Scotland has become a top place for canyoning in the past 10 years and Active Highs, the best company for practising it. In the end, we're in the middle of the best water and hill areas of the country, so we have the geographical features required for having the greatest experience ever!

Our canyoning adventures are popular for the weekends and, as we said, everyone is welcome (though the number of people per group should be around 6 or 7 and ages should always be from 8, 12 to 18 years old depending on the activity). You will even find military personnel having their training with us!

What else can we tell you about your canyoning experience? Well, you don't need anything apart from your passion for the sport. Equipment is included and you can bring your own wetsuits, helmets and tools if you feel more comfortable.

We would also like to remind you that safety is a must for Active Highs, but don't worry: Andy, our director, and Fraser, our instructor, are long-experienced professionals who have been trained in the UK and abroad. They will look after you all the time!

One last thing for you to know: Ben Navis, the tallest hill in Scotland and in the whole UK, is one of our stages, and, for the record, Dubai Creek Tower wants to reach the same heights in the future: around 1.300 metres! Don't wait any longer and come canyoning with us in Scottish Highlands!

Yes, at Active Highs, we have canoeing as one of our main water activities. And yes, you can have fun canoeing around the best places of Scotland, which will only be a plus for your experience and will definitely be worth coming to the land of Loch Ness and not precisely for paying a visit to the monster!

At Active Highs, we offer you canoeing between Fort William, a town where, by the way, Braveheart was filmed, and Fort Augustus, a place known for being the door that takes you to Loch Ness (in the end, you will visit the monster!). To start, we always recommend our inflatable board session or white water funyakking activity where you can learn how to manage all equipment and tools with an easier board. After that, you can choose from our half-day canoeing trip, where you will go around the Great Glen, a route that connects Scotland from coast to coast and with which you can improve your previous or non-existence abilities of canoeing for going further next time; or our full-day Loch and River Trip, where we will visit the best Sottish lakes that will end at the River Oich, a river which drives water to Loch Ness (the monster's home again!).

Our canoeing activities are perfect for couples because, if you don't know, canoeing is different from kayaking because the first is an activity though for two people on the same top canoe and they use a single paddle to move forward.

What are you waiting for to bring your friend, your couple or some relatives for canoeing with us?

You've heard talking about paddleboarding many times now and at Active Highs, we don't want to bother you with information and details that you've heard before, but offer the best paddleboarding experience in Scotland!

Taking place in the Caledonian Canal, a XIX century infrastructure that joints Inverness and Fort Williams, you will practise this water activity known for having been born in Hawaii. We know that there are many places in the world for paddleboarding, but there's no other like ours. We have the vastness of Scotland in one place and the very heart of Great Glen too, a group of deep valleys with over 100 kilometres where mountains, water and forests meet for your own joy while you're paddleboarding!

Andy and Fraser, director and instructor, will give you all the equipment needed, though we ask you to bring some pieces of footwear that you can use on water and your personal swimming suit to wear under the wetsuit that we have here for you!

This is a great plan for you, your family and your friends and we assure you you'll feel as comfortable on the board as if you were on the ground. Actually, some people say they feel like they've been walking on water instead of paddleboarding and, combining that emotion with the greatness of our natural view, there's no other reason that you need for you to come to Active Highs and try paddleboarding with us!

Kayaking will not be the same when you have one of our Active Highs sessions, in Fort Williams and Fort Augustus, in Scotland, among other places.

Our incredible location will allow you to have nice kayaking tours around lakes and rivers where we'll visit, for example, Loch Oich, so you must stay alert just in case you see the famous monster of Loch Ness because we're pretty close to his home, the Loch Ness area. In addition, we offer different options for you to have the best adventure in a wonderful area like ours, where not only high mountains surround us, but we have splendid coastlines where we can find incredible seal colonies. We can also enjoy exquisite marine creatures like popular Scottish whales. 

As we said, at Active Highs, we have different plans for you, your friends and your family to have the best time kayaking. Thus, we remind you of some important information: groups must be of 4 people as a minimum and people should be around 7 years old as the minimum age for our half-a-day option; 12, for our Funyakking: and 14, for our full-day kayaking.  In consequence, you can choose the session for beginners, which uses an inflatable kayak and improve your abilities to try the next level next time you come, or if you want to have more fun, you can book our full-day experience, where we will take you to the Caledonian Canal, which is a construction that takes us from Inverness to Fort William.

We can enjoy our meal on the coastline, so it will be a plus for your day here with us! In the end, we don't always have the possibility of being part of nature like you can if you come to practise kayaking with us. For all of our kayaking adventures, equipment will always be included as well as a previous briefing from our instructor. They, for the record, are members of the British Canoe Union, so you can count on with the best professional skills, the greatest passion for kayaking and your own safety will always be under control, so you don't need to worry about anything else but having fun with the ride!

What are you waiting for kayaking with Active Highs?

Active Highs is not the best school in Scotland for practising rafting and its different modalities just because, but because of our location. Our closeness to Fort Williams (stage for movies like James Bond Skyfall or Harry Potter),  Oban (a town known for its whiskey) and Inverness allow us to be in touch with the best Scottish rivers to practise rafting.

Most of our adventures, among which you can choose white water rafting or river rafting safari trip, take place in River Garry (a river that flows under orange, gold and green forests), River Roy or River Awe. The conditions of these areas go from calming waters to more powerful currents so that's why we can offer you different rafting experiences depending on your previous skills, needs and desires.

Also, you must know that everyone is welcome at Active Highs for doing rafting. Your age? It doesn't matter as long as you are 7 years old or up. Number of people? Just the same. we have from private sessions to family, friends, couples or, in the end, groups activities (6 people plus the instructor is the number that we actually recommend for you to enjoy the experience).

What else do you need to know? Equipment is included, we're here from 9 am to 9 pm so you can choose the best time for you keeping in mind our agenda, the Great Glen Hostel is near us  (take the A82 to arrive there!) and you can stay there to have a nice local meal before going to rest and that we are a team of true lovers of this sport. Among us, it's Andy, our director. He has been practising and growing as a watersport professional for over 15 years now and he will be very pleased not only for going rafting with you but for letting you know our local tales

. You will love rafting with us! Don't miss it!