Achiltibuie

Stores, Crofts and Open Sea

The only unleaded and diesel for twenty-five miles is sold at Achiltibuie Stores, along with the maps, fishing gear, buckets, spades and postcards. The shop doubles as a fishmonger of sorts: creel-fresh lobster, brown crab and squat lobster, with salmon, dressed crab and mackerel brought in from Sea Stocks of Inverness. Linda's Chocolate Brownies are made locally, the vegetables come from Achiltibuie Garden ten minutes' walk away, and if you want to fish the River Garvie the permits are issued over the same counter. Special cuts of meat can be ordered in from Highland butchers.

You are, by this point, a long way out. Achiltibuie is a dispersed crofting and fishing community, a few hundred houses and neighbouring hamlets scattered between the mountains and the coast, looking across the water to the Summer Isles and the mass of Ben More Coigach behind them. It sits inside the Assynt–Coigach National Scenic Area, a landscape of isolated peaks rising from moor and loch, small bays and a great deal of open space under changing skies.

The Road In and a Welcome at the Well

Getting here is part of it. From Ullapool you take the A835 north for about nine miles, then turn onto the single-track Achiltibuie road for roughly twelve more; the coastal approach from Lochinver is single-track too, and unsuitable for long vehicles. There is no railway. Garve, on ScotRail's Inverness–Kyle line, is the nearest station to Ullapool, but it does not bring you close. On weekdays the D&E Coaches 811 and 811A run between Ullapool and the peninsula's settlements, though some outlying stops are request-only and need booking a day ahead.

For food and a drink, head round to Altandhu and the Am Fuaran Bar, where the outdoor seats face west toward the Summer Isle of Ristol. The kitchen runs to homemade soup, cured smoked salmon, Highland Aberdeen Angus sirloin and Scottish chicken breast, with whole locally caught lobster, dressed crab and smoked-haddock chowder among the usual specials. Andrew and Shona Wilson opened the bar in 1976 and named it "welcome to the well," after a well at the foot of the drive where walkers once stopped to rest. The Summer Isles Hotel, a community fixture since 1873, is closed for a substantial refurbishment and is due to reopen in 2027.

Church and Coigach Resistance

The white building on Main Road, just beyond the war memorial and the fire station, is the Coigach Free Church, put up around 1852 for a congregation of three or four hundred. The land here has a longer memory of resistance than of worship: in 1852 and 1853 the people of Coigach saw off five attempts over eighteen months to serve them with removal summonses, with local women often at the front. A memorial to that stand, Lorg na Còigich, is being raised above Acheninver.

Postman's Paths, Ridges and Bays

The walking is the reason many people come. The Culnacraig circuit follows a stretch of the old postman's path, from an era when a walking postman fetched the mail twice weekly and tarmac did not reach the village until the 1960s. Stac Pollaidh gives a short, steep ridge with views over Assynt, and the coast beyond runs to Achnahaird, with its broad sands, and on to the quieter Garvie Bay, sandy only at low tide.

Out among the Summer Isles

In season, the Isabella runs out from Badentarbet Pier with room for twelve passengers and a dog, past the Summer Isles to watch for otters, seals and, with luck, a basking shark.