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Places to visit
in Sutherland.

It’s 20:04 in Sutherland.
Sutherland

Assynt, Durness and the Kyle of Tongue.

Sutherland runs from the Dornoch Firth round to Cape Wrath and along the north coast. In the west, lone mountains such as Suilven rise over a country of lochans, and the sands at Achmelvich and Sandwood Bay are as pale as shells. Along the north coast you'll find Smoo Cave at Durness, wide sea lochs and the story of the Clearances told at Bettyhill. The east is gentler, with Dornoch's honey-coloured cathedral and seals on the sandbanks of Loch Fleet. Fill the tank whenever you pass a pump, as the roads are long and often single track.

CastlesBeachesWaterfallsMuseumsVillagesWalks
Place of the day19 hours ago

Ardvreck Castle.

The ruin of a 1490s Macleod tower house on a promontory in Loch Assynt, where Montrose was taken prisoner in 1650.

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From our archive19 hours agoSutherlandForsinard Train StationSutherlandGlendhu BothyAssyntHermit's CastleSutherlandInshegraSutherlandKnockan Crag National Nature ReserveSutherlandLoch Fleet National Nature Reserve

Sutherland this autumn, in our photographs.

Six places in Sutherland, each as we found it.

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Places to visit19 hours ago

Torrisdale Bay.

Torrisdale Bay is close to Bettyhill, and worth the trip on a good day.

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From the magazine19 hours agoThe printed copy of Issue 03Issue 03Winter 2021

The photographer Richard Gaston walked 240 miles from Fort William to Cape Wrath, the north-west tip of mainland Britain, and found his moment of euphoria at Sandwood Bay.

The self-sufficient walk took more than two and a half weeks and is regarded as one of the most challenging long-distance walks in the country. Rain lashed the glens of Knoydart, but there were rewards too, from morning sun lighting Eas a' Chual Aluinn, the highest waterfall in the UK, to mist over Loch Stack at sunrise. The days settled into a rhythm of 13 miles, with green tea and porridge every morning. Then, eight miles from the end, came Sandwood Bay, with Atlantic waves on its mile-long white sands. As he says, 'waking up and going to sleep in the elements for days on end allowed a connection to the land I hadn’t experienced before'.

Read the full story in Issue 03
Did you know18 hours ago

Dunrobin Castle, near Golspie in Sutherland, has its own railway station, first opened in 1870, and trains still stop there today.

The castle is the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, and the station soon became a private one for the castle, in 1871. Its platform is unusually long because the family sometimes had three or four hundred guests at a time. It reopened for summer services in 1985 and now opens only when the castle is open, from late March to late October. Passengers used to raise an arm to stop the train, but since May 2023 they press a button on a kiosk on the platform to alert the driver. The waiting room, built in 1902, was once described as looking like a Swiss chalet.

See Dunrobin Castle · Sutherland
From our guide18 hours ago

The Bone Caves.

High on a limestone crag above Inchnadamph, four dark cave mouths look out over a quiet glen. Digs here since the 1880s have turned up the bones of animals from the depths of the ice age: reindeer, arctic fox, lynx, brown bear and what may be Scotland's only polar bear. Much later, in the Neolithic, people buried their dead in the caves. The walk up follows the Allt nan Uamh, the burn of the caves, past little waterfalls, and the last climb to the caves is steep. From inside the largest, you look straight back down the glen.

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Did you know18 hours ago

A band of rock running from Loch Ewe to Stoer, in Assynt, is debris from a meteorite that struck about 990 million years ago.

Geologists call the layer the Stac Fada Member, after a headland near Stoer, and it runs for about 50 kilometres along the coast, generally 10 to 15 metres thick. For years it was taken for volcanic rock, until a team from the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen published evidence in 2008, including shocked quartz, that it was thrown out by an impact. In 2025 a new study of shocked zircon grains dated the strike to about 990 million years ago, some 200 million years more recent than the earlier estimate. The crater itself has never been found, and the best guess is that it lies under the Minch, the stretch of sea between Lewis and the north-west Highlands.

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Places to visit18 hours ago

Strathy Beach.

A sandy bay at the mouth of the River Strathy on the north coast, reached by a path through the dunes, with cliffs, caves and sea stacks along its eastern side.

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From the JournalThe journal17 hours ago

Smoo Cave and The Wizard of Reay

With its deep pools and three cavernous chambers, it’s no wonder that Smoo Cave has become a popular stop on the North Coast 500.

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From our guide17 hours ago

Smoo Cave.

On the eastern edge of Durness, a narrow, steep-sided inlet cuts into the limestone cliffs, and at its head yawns the huge mouth of Smoo Cave. Steps lead down from the car park, and a footbridge crosses the burn to the entrance. The first chamber, carved by the sea, is about 50 feet high at the mouth. Beyond it, a river drops through a hole in the roof into an inner chamber in a roaring waterfall. The name probably comes from the Old Norse for a hiding place, and people have sheltered here since prehistoric times.

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Places to visit17 hours ago

River Dionard.

A salmon river flowing out of Loch Dionard below Foinaven, down Strath Dionard to the head of the Kyle of Durness, through wild, empty glen country.

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From our archive17 hours ago

Loch na Thull, Sutherland.

A still loch by the road at Rhiconich, where the way to Kinlochbervie leaves the A838, its water mirroring the bare hills, with boats for the fishing.

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