Walk the woodland trail through Coille na Glas Leitir

Follow the Mountain Trail up to the Conservation Cairn for the view over Loch Maree to Slioch

Look up at the Torridon hills from the glen road

Find mosses and liverworts on the pinewood floor

Beinn Eighe was declared a national nature reserve in 1951 by Dr John Berry of the Nature Conservancy — the first in Great Britain. Its summits are capped with pale Cambrian quartzite that can look like snow from the glen, and at Coille na Glas Leitir on the northern side stands the largest fragment of ancient Caledonian pinewood left in north-west Scotland; 680 plant species have been recorded here, including the richest oceanic moss and liverwort flora of any single site in Britain.

Torridon and Beinn Eighe: Britain's First National Nature Reserve

Torridon

The North Coast 500 as a loop from Inverness: dolphins off Chanonry Point, the cliffs of Duncansby and Dunnet Head, Smoo Cave and Sandwood Bay, Handa's seabirds and Suilven, then the Bealach na Bà and Culloden.

The North Coast 500

Walk the walled and woodland gardens at Inverewe

Look across Loch Ewe from the garden viewpoint

Osgood Mackenzie began Inverewe in 1862 on barren ground on the shore of Loch Ewe, sheltering it with pines until exotic plants would grow; the garden now covers about 20 hectares with more than 2,500 kinds of exotic plants, and his daughter Mairi Sawyer gave it to the National Trust for Scotland in 1952 with an endowment. Down the coast, Gairloch has beaches, a harbour and Gairloch Museum, which reopened in 2019 in a former Cold War operations room.

Gairloch and Inverewe: The Garden Made from Bare Ground

Drive the hairpins of the Bealach na Bà from Tornapress to the summit

Stop at the top for the view west over Raasay and Skye

Drop down to Applecross village on the far side

Come back by the coast road towards Shieldaig, opened in 1975

The Bealach na Bà, the 'pass of the cattle', was begun in 1818 and finished in September 1822 by John Reid & Son of Edinburgh, and it is engineered like an Alpine pass, with tight hairpins and gradients approaching 20%. It has the greatest ascent of any road climb in the United Kingdom, rising from sea level at Applecross to 626m in about six kilometres, and is the third highest mountain pass in Scotland. Applecross itself — A' Chomraich, 'the sanctuary', where the Irish monk Maelrubha founded a monastery — was reachable only by boat until the 19th century, and the coast road round the peninsula to Shieldaig and Torridon was not built until 1975.

Bealach na Bà: The Biggest Road Climb in Britain

Cross Fowler's suspension bridge over the gorge

Look up at the 46m Falls of Measach from the viewing platform

Walk the woodland trail along the rim of the gorge

Corrieshalloch is a gorge 1.5km long and 60m deep but only about 10m wide at the lip, cut by meltwater at the end of the last ice age along lines of weakness in the Moine rock. The Falls of Measach drop 46m into it, seen from a Victorian suspension footbridge built by Sir John Fowler, one of the designers of the Forth Bridge, and from a viewing platform further down. At 7 hectares it is the smallest of Scotland's national nature reserves.

Corrieshalloch Gorge and the Falls of Measach

Visit Eilean Donan Castle, on its tidal island where lochs Duich, Long and Alsh meet, founded in the 13th century, wrecked by Royal Navy frigates in 1719 and rebuilt between 1912 and 1932

Cross to Skye and back over the Skye Bridge from Kyle of Lochalsh

Walk the waterfront at Plockton, where cabbage palms line the shore of Loch Carron

Eilean Donan stands on a tidal island where lochs Duich, Long and Alsh meet. Founded in the 13th century, it was wrecked by Royal Navy frigates in 1719 during the Jacobite rising and rebuilt between 1912 and 1932. West of it the road runs out to Kyle of Lochalsh and the Skye Bridge, and north over the hill lies Plockton, sheltered enough on Loch Carron for cabbage palms to grow along its waterfront.

Eilean Donan, Kyle of Lochalsh and Plockton

Walk Telford's grid of streets between the shore and the hill

Watch the Stornoway ferry come in at the pier

Walk out along the shore of Loch Broom towards Rhue

Ullapool was laid out in 1788 by the British Fisheries Society to a design by Thomas Telford, turning a hamlet of twenty-odd households on the east shore of Loch Broom into a herring port. It is still a fishing harbour and a yacht haven, and the Stornoway ferry has run from here since the terminal opened in the 1970s, 43 miles across the Minch.

Ullapool: Telford's Herring Port on Loch Broom

Walk up the road to the second broch, Dun Troddan

Cross to Skye on the Glenelg–Kylerhea turntable ferry in summer

Watch for otters from the hide above the Kyle at Kylerhea

Dun Telve is one of the best preserved brochs in Scotland, standing in a quiet glen four kilometres from Kirkton, with its neighbour Dun Troddan 470m up the road and the semi-broch of Dun Grugaig further east; the two brochs are about two thousand years old. From Glenelg the ferry to Kylerhea on Skye has run for centuries — a car ferry has run since 1934, and since 1982 the MV Glenachulish of 1969, the last manually operated turntable ferry in the world, has worked the crossing in summer.

Glenelg: Two Iron Age Brochs and the Turntable Ferry

Look across Loch Scavaig to the Cuillin from the shore at Elgol

Elgol sits on Loch Scavaig at the end of the Strathaird peninsula, looking straight across at the Cuillin ridge. Small boats run from the slip to Loch Coruisk, the freshwater loch held in the horseshoe of the mountains, and on to the Small Isles; south of the village is the cave where Charles Edward Stuart is said to have waited for a boat to the mainland.