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.

Bettyhill and Strathnaver: Where the Clearances Happened

Bettyhill

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 Dubh Lochan Trail out across the bog at Forsinard

Climb the Flows Lookout tower for the view over the peatland

Look for greenshank, golden plover and dunlin on the flows in spring and early summer

Take the train to Forsinard on the Far North Line

The Flow Country covers about 4,000km² of Caithness and Sutherland in deep peat and bog pools — the largest blanket bog in Europe and a huge store of carbon locked in its peat. In 2024 UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site for its blanket bog. The RSPB reserve at Forsinard has the Dubh Lochan Trail out over the bog pools and the Flows Lookout tower, and greenshank, golden plover and dunlin nest on the flows from April to July.

The Flow Country: The Largest Blanket Bog in Europe

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

Watch the right-hander peeling off the flagstone reef

Surf Thurso East if you have the experience for a reef break

See the Caithness flagstone the reef is made of in the town

Check the forecast and come on a big north swell

Thurso East is a fast right-hand reef break on Scotland's north coast, over layered Caithness flagstone, the stone that was split into paving for the Strand in London and much of Paris. The reef holds swell from about two feet to fifteen, and depending on the tide and the swell direction it throws a long, walling wave with hollow barrel sections. In 2006 it hosted the first O'Neill Highland Open, won by the British surfer Russell Winter.

Thurso East: The Right-Hander at the Top of Scotland

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

Drive the B855, the most northerly road on mainland Britain

Stand at the northernmost point of Great Britain

Watch the seabirds from the viewing platform by the lighthouse

Look across the Pentland Firth to Hoy and the Orkney Mainland

Find the wartime defences that guarded Scapa Flow

Easter Head on the Dunnet peninsula is the northernmost point of the island of Great Britain, and the single-track B855 out to it is the most northerly road on the mainland. From the cliffs by the lighthouse you look across the Pentland Firth to Stroma, and to Hoy and the Orkney Mainland 15 kilometres away. The cliffs hold fulmars, guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills, skuas and puffins in season, and there is a viewing platform. Near the lighthouse are the remains of wartime defences built to protect the naval base at Scapa Flow.

Dunnet Head: The Top of Great Britain

Stand beside The Emigrants, Gerald Laing's statue of the cleared families

Follow the story of the Clearances and the gold rush at the Timespan heritage centre

Drive up the Strath of Kildonan to the burns where the 1869 gold rush happened

Helmsdale was planned in 1814 to take the families cleared from the Strath of Kildonan by the Countess of Sutherland; the Kildonan clearances of 1813–19 led to riots, when a crowd drove the incoming sheep farmers out of the valley. In 2007 Gerald Laing's three-metre bronze, The Emigrants, was unveiled here in memory of those who left for new lives overseas. Up the strath is Kildonan, scene of a gold rush in 1869 started by Robert Gilchrist, a local man back from 17 years in the Australian goldfields. Telford's old road bridge, finished in 1811, still stands.