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

Durness

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

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

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

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 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

Go round the Strathnaver Museum and follow the story of the Sutherland Clearances

Find the Pictish Farr Stone at the west gable of the old church

Find out why the minister of Farr read the eviction notices

Walk out across Torrisdale Bay where the Naver meets the sea

Bettyhill is a village on the north coast in the parish of Farr, at the foot of Strathnaver. The Strathnaver Museum, volunteer-run and open since 1976 in the old parish church, tells the history of north-west Sutherland through the Highland Clearances — including the minister of Farr, Rev David Mackenzie, who as a Gaelic speaker was made to read the eviction notices to his own people. At the church's west gable stands the Farr Stone, a Pictish carved stone of around 850 AD. Below the village is the wide sweep of Torrisdale Bay, and the River Naver, known for its salmon.