The pier at Lower Diabaig runs about 360 feet from the shore on a curved causeway of piled rubble, its timber rubbing posts still fixed along the edge. C. R. Manners designed it in 1902, and it comes with a small store roofed in corrugated iron, listed now as Category B. The road ends here, at a horseshoe bay under crags, and there is nowhere further to drive.
Getting here is part of the point. The single-track road runs west from Torridon across moor and lochans, climbs the Bealach na Gaoithe, the pass of the winds, with Upper Loch Torridon, Ben Damph and the Coulin Forests spread out below, then drops through Upper Diabaig to the sea. There are steep gradients and narrow passing places, and it is no place for a large motorhome.
At the very end stands Gille Brighde, a café and restaurant that opens for the season and describes itself as "more than you think at the end of the road." Amanda cooks, with over 30 years in hospitality behind her, and Aart, who came from the Netherlands and renovated the building, bakes the bread and chooses the ales and malt whiskies. Their dogs are Flo and Mabel.
The menu changes with the season and availability. Cullen skink comes with smoked haddock, leek, potato and cream. Hand-dived scallops arrive with parsnip purée, charred leek and a butter made from wild garlic picked at Diabaig. The seafood platter gathers creel-caught langoustines, scallops, cured trout, smoked mussels, prawns and crab onto one board. There is a wild-venison steak with rowan, juniper and redcurrant, whisky crème brûlée with Diabaig berries, and Aart's sticky toffee pudding. Well-behaved dogs may come inside if there is room, and there is a large garden to sit out in, though the croft sheep roam and want keeping a distance from.
Walking is a major draw. The path to Craig is the one to do: six miles there and back, two and a half to three and a half hours, rocky and boggy in stretches, keeping high above the sea past Lochan Dubh before dropping through birch and pine to a pebbly beach. Craig was once one of the most remote youth hostels in Britain, and is now a bothy looked after by volunteers. Out across the water sit Raasay, Rona and the Trotternish ridge on Skye, with dolphins and porpoises for anyone who watches the sea.
The Craig path links on to Red Point, a longer linear route that needs a lift arranged at one end, since no public transport reaches either trailhead. Above it, at a Neolithic rock shelter, a grassy shell midden marks where people ate and discarded shellfish over a very long span of time.
For the hills, the car park at Coire Mhic Nobuil, back along the Diabaig road, is the start for Beinn Alligin: a hard circuit of six and a half miles over Tom na Gruagaich and Sgùrr Mòr, with a scramble across the Horns and, on a clear day, the Outer Hebrides in view. Nearby, the National Trust for Scotland has kept red deer in an enclosure at Torridon for fifty years, and you can feed them pellets when a ranger is on hand.
The rock itself takes its name from here. The Diabaig Formation, the oldest in the Torridon Group, is around a billion years old, lake silts and river sands that filled valleys cut into older gneiss, with tiny fossil filaments preserved in phosphate. The shore section begins just west of the jetty.
Worshippers used to cross by boat to Shieldaig, and at communion boats came in from Applecross, Gairloch, Skye and Raasay until the gathering ran to hundreds, the minister preaching outdoors from a wooden pulpit box at a place called An Cos, the Crevice. The 1881 map counted seventy-three roofed buildings among the crofts.
There are no public toilets, and the nearest railway station is Achnasheen. What Diabaig has, apart from the sea and the hills, is the Gille Brighde kitchen at the end of a long road and a pair of dogs to meet you at the door.