The Last House

My time in Scotland was nearly over. I had to get back for work by mid-August. So I hurried along the northern coast, edging from Sutherland into Caithness. Caithness, in the north-east corner of Scotland, rapidly became another of my favourite counties. Gradually I left the bare, isolated mountains of the far north-west and entered the flatter landscape of the Flow Country, Europe's largest blanket bog. Though much of the interior was desolate peatland, the cliffed coastline was constantly interesting. Along the coast and in shallow, sheltered valleys were square fields neatly dotted with big, round bales of freshly-cut hay. I passed grey and black, turreted castles guarding bleak, windswept settlements.

I skirted the nuclear power plant at Dounreay, looked down over Scrabster harbour (a ferry sails from here to the Orkney Islands), then stopped for a while in the tidy little sea-town of Thurso. This whole area was colonised by the Vikings, and Scandinavian influence still remains strong today. I spent a couple of absorbing hours in Thurso's brilliant new museum, Caithness Horizons, housed in the old Town Hall and Library building. On the ground floor you can see the Skinnet and Ulbster standing stones with their mysterious Pictish carvings; and on an upper floor there's a fascinating display dedicated to local geologist and botanist, Robert Dick.

Just east of Thurso, and beyond Dunnet Bay, stands the lighthouse at Dunnet Head, the most northely point of the Scottish mainland (see top pic). From here you can gaze out across the Pentland Firth at the Orkney Isles. You can identify quite clearly the Old Man Of Hoy (the famous rock stack much beloved of climbers) just off Hoy, Orkney's south-westerly island; and the entrance to Scapa Flow, that great natural harbour used by the Vikings more than a thousand years ago and more recently by British fleets during both World Wars.

It's not much further to John o' Groats, journey's end for most tourists and coach trippers, with its cafés, fast food stalls and souvenir shops, and its Last House in Scotland...

It's much more rewarding to make your way out to wildly beautiful Duncansby Head, just a few miles north-east of John o' Groats. From the cliff-top path you can approach nesting fulmars, their nests perched precariously on near-vertical cliff faces; the chicks, seeming almost bigger than their parents, were huge, grey-white balls of fluffy down. In some of the rocky bays seals trod water, basking - heads up - in the sun. Kittiwakes shrieked, gannets dived, and a small raft of 8 eider ducks floated close to shore.

These are the striking, needle-pointed sea stacks at Duncansby...

Ben Hope

The next day I left my tent pitched at Durness and took the coast road south-east to Loch Eriboll. The road - often single-track with passing places - wound round this magnificent loch to a river bridge. Just beyond the bridge a much narrower road headed south by the side of Loch Hope. At the end of the loch the mountains closed in. I parked my car in a small parking place in the glen of Strath More, put on my boots, adjusted my walking poles and set off up the steep western flank of Ben Hope, the most northerly Munro in Scotland.

On this recent Scottish trip my vague plan had been: to explore Scotland's western and northern coastline - perhaps visiting an island or two - and to climb three of Scotland's Munros, the most southerly, the most northerly and the highest. I'd achieved most of these things. I'd travelled the coast, crossed to the islands of Harris and Lewis, and summited on Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the British Isles. I hadn't climbed Ben Lomond, the most southerly Munro, because of torrential rain; I didn't fancy such a hard slog in the wet. So I was especially keen to make it to the top of Ben Hope, the highest point in the north. I was in luck, for the weather was fine.

I tracked a burn up the mountainside - past tumbling waterfalls and rocky platforms to ever lovelier heights - and half-way up met a toad which obligingly posed for a quick photo...

I was pleased my fitness levels had increased over the weeks, and I gained the top without too much difficulty - keeping up with a scattering of other hill walkers much younger than myself! From here the views were quite spectacular...

The Sky At Durness

After the delights of Sheigra and Sandwood I followed the broad, bare sweep of a glacial valley for several miles to the Kyle of Durness. The mountains of Foinavon and Arkle towered majestically in the east. I wanted to catch the last ferry of the day across the shallow waters of the Kyle to the Cape Wrath peninsula - but it had been cancelled. So I carried on a further few miles and pitched on the cliff-top campsite at Durness. This site overlooks a perfect family beach - of rock stacks, rockpools, silver sand and pristine cleanliness.

I spent much of the evening gazing up at the sky. Black and thunderous clouds raced from south-east to north-west - but, miraculously, the downpour never happened. A purple mantle hung over shifting layers of black, grey, white, pink and blue. A dying sun, low on the western horizon, bathed all in gold. It shone like a laser beam of piercing light, and every object - every leaf, rock, stone, street light, tent pole and campervan - stood out in ultra-defined clarity for a few moments. Then it was gone. I crawled backwards into my inner tent, manoeuvred jerkily into my sleeping bag, and zipped it up...

Sandwood

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. JOHN MUIR

The beach at Sandwood Bay in the far north west of Scotland is one of the loveliest you might ever hope to find, and this is much to do with its remoteness. You can reach it only on foot. You park in a small car park just south of Sheigra - the tiny inlet where I'd wildcamped the night. (There's a small toilet block there, with facilities for a wash and brush up and for filling your water bottles.) Opposite the car park begins a path which takes you 4 and a half miles across grassy, heathery peatland, past a series of jewel-like lochs, to Sandwood Bay.

It was early in the morning and there were few other walkers about. After a couple of hours I crossed the machair and descended seawards through sand dunes bristling with marram grass. A few rag-tag groups of beachcampers had already struck camp and were heading back towards 'civilisation'. By the time I'd placed my first footsteps on the fine, silvery sand, only one solitary tent remained. I had the mile-long beach practically to myself.

I made for an outlying platform of low rocks half-way between the bay's twin headlands (see pic), then perched on one of the rocks and scanned around with my binoculars. Oystercatchers probed for cockles and clams in the wet sand of the shoreline. Gannets thronged the skies above, gliding on stiff, black-tipped wings and plunging for fish in the turquoise ocean. As they dived, their wings folded back in a streamlined 'W' pattern. Lone cormorants flapped over the bay in direct, purposeful flight; others hung out their wings to dry on a distant sea stack, looking for all the world like giant vampire bats. Twice I briefly glimpsed a large, black and white shape in the water. No sooner did I focus on it than it submerged again. Could this have been an orca, or killer whale? It's quite possible - there are regular sightings of killer, minke, humpback and other whales, not to mention basking sharks, dolphins and porpoises, round this part of the Scottish coast.

I turned away from the water's edge, and walked beyond the strandline and behind the dunes to sheltered Sandwood Loch. Here eight ringed plover scurried along the shingle rim of the loch, teasing out invertebrates among the stones. Every so often, after a spell of frenzied motion, they would freeze, their brown and white feathers and black and white heads (resembling highwayman's masks) merging perfectly with the pebbled background of the loch's foreshore. It was so tranquil here, so unspoilt, so utterly beautiful - I almost felt I'd reached the very gates of Paradise itself.

(Like Ben and Glen Nevis, the Sandwood Estate is owned and managed by the John Muir Trust. It's a very special, indeed unique place. There are two main types of rock: Torridonian Sandstone - formed around 600 million years ago - and Lewisian Gneiss, which is 2 - 3000 million years old. The pattern of rivers and lochs, cliffs and bays, humps and hollows tell a tale of moving glaciers and melting ice during the last Ice Age - a mere 10,000 years ago. The strip of grassland along the coast, known as the machair, supports an astonishing variety of plants and insects (200 kinds of wild flower have been recorded, including eight orchid varieties), and it's also home to such uncommon birds as the twite and the corncrake, and the increasingly rare skylark. Today, amongst the human inhabitants, crofting and fishing are continuing, important sources of employment, and the Estate has fifity-four working crofts.)

A Man In Assynt

Who owns this landscape?-/The millionaire who bought it or/the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning/with a deer on his back?/Who possesses this landscape?-/The man who bought it or/I who am possessed by it? NORMAN MACCAIG A Man In Assynt

Just north of Ullapool is the National Nature Reserve at Knochan Crag. I drove there on the Monday I returned from Lewis, and idled round the short nature trail which winds across this geologically famous cliff. Every now and then you stumble upon minimalist rock sculptures and fragments of Noman MacCaig's poetry set in stone. From the top of the crag you look out over an extensive, glaciated, grey-blue, grey-green world of scoured valleys, bare, rugged mountains and tiny lochans. This ancient, deserted landscape - it's the parish of Assynt in the Scottish region of west Sutherland - contains some of the oldest rocks to be found anywhere. And, in nearby caves, the bones of extinct bears, wolves and reindeer have been discovered.

Deserted. Or, more accurately, cleared. For, in 18th and 19th century Highland Scotland, a forced evacuation of the peasant population took place with even more devastating effect than that produced by the English Enclosure Acts (which I've written about before). Scottish landowners - in a bid to improve profitability by turning huge areas of land over to sheep farming - ran roughshod over the old, cottage-economy, crofting culture of the Highlands. Whole communities were broken up and scattered to lowland and coastal areas. Entire populations of hills and valleys emigrated westwards (which is why one meets so many people of Scottish descent in the Americas - from Canada to Patagonia). Poverty, economic forces, the process of clearance and other self-interested acts by a relatively small number of rich, private landowners - these are the reasons why this part of Scotland is so depopulated. Although some landowners were comparatively benign, and tried to create a sustainable life for their tenants under the new farming system, others were notoriously cruel - such as the 19th century Countess of Sutherland, who quite literally burned crofters out of their homes, and whose name, even today, is mentioned only in hushed, shocked tones by present-day Sutherlanders.

I continued through this vast, humbling landscape, in the shadow of the Ben More massif, to the castle of Ardvreck, romantically situated on the northern shore of Loch Assynt (see pic). I paused a while and explored its ruined tower. It's beautiful there, with the rocky fortress of Quinag to the north, and the distinctive peaks and ridges of Canisp and Suilven to the south. At the end of the glen is the little fishing village of Lochinver, and just to the south of Lochinver, on the road to Inverpolly Lodge and Altandhu, lies Inverkirkaig, at the head of Loch Kirkaig - a sheltered sea inlet into which the lively river Kirkaig flows. It was here the poet Norman MacCaig spent his summers fishing in the lochs and lochans, and no doubt honing his fine, pithy poems - full of verve and wit - as he cast his line.

I pressed on round the rocky, indented coast of Assynt, through Clachtoll, Clashnessie and Drumbeg - along a narrow track of infinite bends and endless ups-and-downs - until I finally joined the A894, which took me to Scourie and Laxford Bridge. When I reached Kinlochverbie it was already late afternoon. A minor road led from here northwards, past tiny, cliff-top settlements, to Sheigra, my day's destination. I drove slowly down a bumpy track and parked on the machair overlooking a small sandy beach and the sea. Here I wildcamped. It was very peaceful. There was only a handful of other tents dotted discretely about the bay. Later I climbed the bay's northern headland - its firm gneiss rock was comfortingly grippy - and gazed out over the wind-chopped Atlantic. Some climbers appeared from nowhere at my feet - they'd been bouldering and free climbing out of sight on the sea-cliffs below. It was the most wonderful place, and only 12 miles from Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point on the British mainland...

(Richard Baker's picture of Ardvreck Castle is available from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License.)