Leave the A93 at Dinnet and head north on the A97. Turn west at the first tarred towards Muir Of Dinnet nature reserve. A notice board and leaflets can be found at the car park. There are several walks around the lochs. The crannog is on the north east part of the loch.
All the walks are fairly flat so if the weather is good a pleasant time taking in other sites can also be had, including the settlement near the car park.
Loch Kinord is in the Muir Of Dinnet nature reserve. This comes from the info sheet.
Kettle, crannog and castle.
Lochs Kinord and Davan also result from the long vanished ice. They formed when two huge chunks of ice pressed down into the land and melted slowly, leaving hollows called 'kettle holes' which then filled with water as the ice melted.
Loch Kinord, the larger of the two lochs, has a number of small islands. One of these near the north-east shore is artificial. It's an old crannog~a loch dwelling where a large hut sat on a platform, once connected to the shore by a narrow causeway. Around 2.000 years ago, Iron Age people using dug-out oak canoes built it by pushing large oak trunks into the loch bed and piling layers of stone, eart and timber on top, to form the base. A large hut was then built on stakes above the water. The crannog stayed in use until medieval times when King Malcolm Canmore (Malcolm III0 may have kept prisoners here in the 11th century. Malcolm used a wooden 'peel' tower on Castle Island (largest island in the loch) as a hunting lodge.
Loch Kinnord has an ancient crannog which was enlarged in medieval times. This was to be the prison for the adjacent Castle Island. The area around the loch has Kinord Stone, Pictish carvings, and several prehistoric settlements.
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Posted by drewbhoy
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