Scotland: Hiking in the North Highlands

Independent departures from your Home City for Inverness, Scotland.

You will be met upon arrival in Inverness and transferred to the Royal Marine Hotel in Brora, where you will stay for three nights.

Overnight: Royal Marine Hotel

Meals: D

Start your tour with a visit to Dunrobin Castle, one of Britain’s oldest continuously inhabited houses dating back to the early 1300s. Home to the Duke of Sutherland, the castle now has 189 rooms. The museum on the castle grounds has an important collection of archaeological relics. Notable among these are the collection of Pictish symbols stones and cross-slabs. The Duke of Sutherland is infamous for the Highland clearances in Sutherland where people were forced from the land to make way for sheep. 

The first walk will be in Dunbeath Strath along Dunbeath Water. The path runs along a gorge through fine woodland of lichen-encrusted downy birches, rowans, and hazels, before reaching open ground. You will see many interesting sights along the way, including an old mill built in 1850/1860, the site of a monastery, an Iron Age broch, a deserted settlement from around 1800 and various chambered cairns. Visit the Dunbeath Heritage Museum after the walk. On the way back, have a short walk to the remains of the Badbea clearance village, where people that were cleared from their land in the 18th century were forced to live.

Approximate hiking distance: 6 miles; Height climbed: 825 ft.

Overnight: Royal Marine Hotel

Meals: B, L, D

Drive farther north into Caithness to explore the wealth of archaeological sites in this part of the north Highlands. Most of Caithness is now uninhabited, but the remains show that this area was highly populated in the past. There are a large number of Neolithic and Iron Age sites. Short walks will take you to some of them, including the Grey Cairns of Camster: two Neolithic tombs (a long cairn and a round cairn) built more than 5,000 years ago, and the Hill o’Many Stanes, consisting of about 200 small stones arranged in rows running down a low hill. They were placed about 4,000 years ago, possibly for gatherings and religious ceremonies. Large arrangements of stone rows like this are rare.

Approximate hiking distance: 5 miles; Height climbed: 730 ft.

Overnight: Royal Marine Hotel

Meals: B, L, D

Leave the east coast and travel to Torridon on the west coast. Enjoy a very scenic walk south of Loch Torridon offering stunning views across the loch to the Torridon mountains and down to the sea. The walk starts with going round a peninsula covered in Scots Pine forest. Continue inland along the river Balgy to the Falls of Balgy where the river drops down in a powerful cascade. The route continues upstream to Loch Damh, surrounded by mountains. From there, walk down a track back to the road.

Approximate hiking distance: 4.75 miles; Height climbed: 575 ft.

Overnight: Tigh an Eilean, Shieldaig

Meals: B, L, D

Drive onto Britain’s most spectacular pass, the Bealach Na Ba. Weather permitting, your first hike on the peninsula will be from the highest point of the pass into the Applecross peninsula. From there, walk up Sgurr a’ Chaorachain 2600 ft (792 m). The walk starts at 2000 ft (600 m), so it is a nice short hill walk with spectacular views into the surrounding corries and mountains, getting better with every step. On a clear day the views are all the way to the Isles of Raasay, Skye and Rum. Visit Applecross after the walk, another pretty village, where you will have a number of walks to choose from, including the a walk to the Coral beaches.

Approximate hiking distance: 6.75 miles; Height climbed: 1,790 ft.

Overnight: Tigh an Eilean, Shieldaig

Meals: B, L, D

You have a number of options around Torridon, from coastal walks to hill walks. There is a very nice coastal walk from Diabeg to the bothy at Craig or you could go inland and hike around Loch Coulin and Loch Clair.

Approximate hiking distance: 6 miles; Height climbed: 985 ft.

Overnight: Tigh an Eilean, Shieldaig

Meals: B, L, D

Travel north to Lochinver. Your journey will take you along the scenic coastal route with spectacular mountain and coastal scenery.

Suilven, the showpiece of Assynt, dominates the landscape north of Ullapool. This is a hill of many shapes; from the south it is a long, drawn-out sugarloaf, with an obvious depression in the middle; from the east it can look like the Matterhorn, rising from its bedrock plinth of Lewisian Gneiss to a narrowing spire; from the north it forms a huge rounded bastion of quartzite capped sandstone. There will be short walks along the way, and since you will be in the North West Highlands UNESCO Global Geopark, some of the walks will be geology themed, starting with the Knockan Crag interpretative geology trail on the way north.

Approximate hiking distance: 4.5 miles; Height climbed: 890 ft.

Overnight: Inver Lodge Hotel, Lochinver

Meals: B, L, D

Handa Island is a short boat ride from the mainland. More than 100,000 seabirds breed on the island, including puffins. Its last 64 human residents were forced to leave the island for Nova Scotia following the potato famine in 1847. The walk on the island takes us past the remains of the village and old burial ground. Back on the mainland, a short but rough coastal walk runs out onto Scourie Headland with superb sea views, particularly from the cairns near the point.

Approximate hiking distance: 6 miles; Height climbed: 610 ft.

Overnight: Inver Lodge Hotel, Lochinver

Meals: B, L, D

On your last day, do a rough walk to the Old Man of Stoer, a spectacular sea-stack. The return walk is across the moor and a low hill with fantastic views in clear weather up the Sutherland coast backed by the mountain Foinaven and inland the mountains of Assynt -- Quinag, Canisp, Suilven, Cul Mor, Cul Beag and Stac Pollaidh. On your way back, stop at Clachtoll for a short walk to the beach and the remains of Clachtoll Broch.

Approximate hiking distance: 6 miles; Height climbed: 1,310 ft.

Overnight: Inver Lodge Hotel, Lochinver

Meals: B, L, D

Drive back to Inverness and transfer to the airport for independent return flights.

Meals: B