For world class walking in a wilderness to rival anything in Europe, it has to be the North Highlands. Nowhere else matches the scale, isolation and sheer stop-in-your-tracks vistas of Scotland’s far flung reaches. Perhaps it’s partly thanks to the clean northern light, gleaming on island-studded lochs or casting rainbows over mist-bound moors. Or maybe it’s the liberating lack of crowds. The landscape diversity here is equally startling, ranging from the historic villages and rolling farmland of the Black Isle to the complex mesh of sea and mountain that makes up the western coastline – a cartographer’s nightmare, but a walker’s dream. Vast expanses of watery peat bog; a lifetime’s supply of lochs (both fresh and salt); hardy relics of Scotland’s once-proud native forest; blond sand beaches dipping into a glass-clear sea; it’s impossible to fit it all into one visit.
And then, of course, there are the mountains; hundreds of them. The gnarled sandstone monsters of the western seaboard are real star material, each with its own distinctive brooding presence. Beinn Bhan, Slioch, Liathach, Beinn Eighe, A’Mhaighdean, An Teallach, Stac Pollaidh, Suilven… if you had to pick the top 10 British hills, no others would get a look in. Inland are higher, wilder places, where you can wander for days without seeing a soul. The on-foot options range from sand dune strolls to wilderness bothy bagging and thrilling ridge scrambles. If you haven’t yet been, you’re missing out. Big time.
Major calendar events
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Loopallu music festival
19-20 September
Ullapool’s family-friendly answer to Glastonbury has won plaudits in the national press, and already enjoys a devoted following after only three years. Where else could you see both Franz Ferdinand and the Ullapool Pipe Band?
O’Neill Highland Open, Thurso
24 April – 1 May
The world’s best surfers do battle in the freezing but legendary breaks off Mainland Britain’s most northerly town. Radical, dude.