Take the ferry from Tarbet across to Handa

Walk the boardwalk circuit round the island to the Great Stack

Count razorbills and guillemots on the cliffs

Watch great skuas over the moor on the way back

Handa is a Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve off the Sutherland coast, reached by a small ferry from Tarbet. Its Torridonian sandstone cliffs hold one of the UK's largest guillemot colonies and an internationally important colony of razorbills, along with puffins, fulmars, kittiwakes and great skuas that nest on the moorland behind.

Handa Island: Razorbills, Guillemots and Great Skuas

Assynt

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

Cross the Kylesku Bridge and stop to look at its curve from the shore

Find where the old ferry crossed before 1984

Take the boat from Kylesku to Loch Beag to see Eas a' Chual Aluinn

Walk to the falls across the moor from the road south of Kylesku

The Kylesku Bridge, a curved concrete box girder over the narrow strait between Loch Glencoul and Loch a' Chàirn Bhàin, opened in July 1984 and replaced the ferry that had crossed about 400 metres to the east; the Queen formally opened it on 8 August. Up Loch Glencoul, Eas a' Chual Aluinn falls 200 metres, the tallest waterfall in the United Kingdom. You can walk to the top of it — about six miles there and back on a rough path across boggy ground from the road south of Kylesku — or, in good weather, take the boat from the slipway by the Kylesku Hotel to Loch Beag and see it from the water.

Kylesku: The Curved Bridge and Britain's Tallest Waterfall

Walk the four miles in from Blairmore to the bay

Find Am Buachaille, the sea stack off the south end of the beach

Look for the Spitfire's Merlin engine, which the sand sometimes uncovers

Look north along the coast towards Cape Wrath, five miles away

Sandwood Bay, five miles south of Cape Wrath, has no road: you walk four miles in from the gravel car park at Blairmore. It is a mile of sand, counted among the cleanest and most unspoilt beaches in mainland Britain, with the sea stack Am Buachaille off its southern end, and it is looked after by the John Muir Trust. On 30 September 1941 Sergeant Michael Kilburn of 124 Squadron crash-landed his Spitfire on the beach after its engine failed and walked away unhurt; the bodywork has long since gone, but the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine sometimes shows through the sand.

Sandwood Bay: The Beach With No Road

Walk out to the ruin of Ardvreck Castle on its promontory

Look along Loch Assynt from the castle shore

Walk up to the Bone Caves on the flank of Breabag, south of Inchnadamph

Ardvreck stands ruined on a promontory in Loch Assynt, built about 1490 by the MacLeods of Assynt to replace the older Assynt Castle. The limestone country around Inchnadamph is riddled with caves and swallow holes, and the Bone Caves on the western flank of Breabag have given up the remains of lynx, brown bear, arctic fox and reindeer dated to 47,000 BCE, the only evidence of polar bear yet found in Scotland, and human skeletons from the 3rd millennium BCE.

Assynt: Ardvreck Castle and the Bone Caves

Walk in from Lochinver towards Suilven across the Assynt moor

Climb to the bealach and on to Caisteal Liath if the weather holds

Watch the boats land at Lochinver harbour

Suilven is a steep-sided ridge about two kilometres long, Torridonian sandstone sitting on a landscape of Lewisian gneiss, and its blunt north-west end, Caisteal Liath, the 'Grey Castle', is the shape that makes the skyline of Assynt. The usual route starts from the Glencanisp Lodge track outside Lochinver, and the walk in across the moor is long before the climb even starts. Lochinver itself is a working fishing harbour, with the white sand of Achmelvich a few miles north.

Lochinver and Suilven: The Sugar Loaf of Assynt

Walk into the sea chamber of Smoo Cave and look down on the waterfall

Walk the sands at Balnakeil and see the ruined church above the beach

Browse the studios of Balnakeil Craft Village in the old MoD camp

Find the John Lennon memorial garden and its 'In My Life' stones

Smoo Cave, at the end of a 600m tidal gorge on the north coast, is a combined sea cave and freshwater cave: its entrance, enlarged by the sea to about 40m wide and 15m high, is the largest sea cave entrance in Britain, and the Allt Smoo drops into the second chamber as a 20m waterfall. The cave is 83m long to the sump at the back. A mile from the village at Balnakeil, the ruined church, said to have been built by monks from Dornoch, stands above the sands, and the 1950s MoD camp beside it is now a craft village. John Lennon spent childhood summers here, and a memorial garden carries three stone slabs inscribed with lines from 'In My Life'.

Durness: Smoo Cave, Balnakeil and Lennon's Memorial Garden

Walk the circuit path round the hill from the road

Climb to the summit ridge of Torridonian sandstone

Look out over the Inverpolly Forest to Suilven and the Minch

Pick out the pinnacles weathered when this was a nunatak above the ice

Stac Pollaidh is small enough to climb in a morning, and its pinnacles are rated in Scotland second only to the Quiraing's on Skye: a crest of Torridonian sandstone just over 610m high, broken into pinnacles and gullies, with smooth scoured flanks. That shape is the record of the last Ice Age — the ridge stood out above the ice sheet as a nunatak and was weathered into spikes while the ice ground the sides smooth beneath it. The path splits about 200m from the road and both branches meet round the back.

Stac Pollaidh: The Little Mountain With the Big Views

Stop at the Three Sisters viewpoint on the A82

Walk into the Lost Valley, Coire Gabhail, between the Sisters

Look up at the Aonach Eagach wall from the glen floor

Glen Coe is a glacial trench cut through the remains of a supervolcano whose caldera-forming eruptions took place about 420 million years ago. The south side rises in the Three Sisters, shoulders of the Bidean nam Bian massif split by Coire Gabhail and Coire nan Lochan; the north side is the single wall of the Aonach Eagach ridge. On 13 February 1692 government soldiers quartered on the MacDonalds of Glencoe killed an estimated 30 of their hosts, and Signal Rock in the woods below is traditionally said to be where the signal was given.

Glen Coe: The Supervolcano and the Massacre of 1692

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.