Most traffic along Loch Ness takes the busy A82 on the northwest shore, racing between Fort William and Inverness. Foyers sits on the quieter southeast side, reached by a single-track road that offers lovely views across the water without the lorries.
The village itself is tiny — barely a shop — but the Falls of Foyers are worth the stop. A short, well-maintained path leads down through woodland to two waterfalls, the lower one dropping into a gorge. It is a safe walk with children and makes a welcome break from driving. Below the falls, the lower village sits right on the loch shore.
A few kilometres north along the same road sits Boleskine House, once home to the occultist Aleister Crowley and later to Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page — now a roofless shell after two fires. Hidden between the upper and lower villages is the Foyers hydropower scheme, the first commercial hydroelectric station built in Britain.
If the Loch Ness monster is your main interest, the exhibition centres at Drumnadrochit are on the opposite shore. But for a peaceful stretch of the Highlands without the crowds, the southeast road through Foyers is hard to beat.