Easter walking in the North West

Mountains and forest at Torridon

The forecast was for bitterly cold northerlies and lots of snow for Easter weekend, so I thought, 'Perfect, lets go walking in the NW of Scotland', described as Britain's most wild and beautiful area. Jo, Bonnie and myself piled into a hire car after work on Thursday and set out on the long drive north, stopping to camp in the snow in a forest somewhere. We then went to Torridon, my new favourite spot in the world, where sea, forest and mountains all collide. We had a short walk along the rugged rocky coast around a point to Diabeg, then along the coast to a bothy at Craig. Bothy's are kindof like basic huts in NZ, but are generally disused buildings that landowners allow the public to use, and are maintained by a volunteer organisation to be free to the public. As such they can vary a lot, but this one was at the palatial end of the scale, as a former youth hostel. We had it to ourselves and explored the bay, filled with ruined old crofters buildings and junk washed in from the sea.

Craig bothy

Next day we walked out and drove around the coast some more, seeing the golden sands of Gairloch, forests, bogs, rugged crags, sunshine and blizzards, before walking in to another bothy, Sheneval.


Here we met friends Ruth, Donald and Jess, who walked in a longer way over lots of hills in the snow. This was another cosy bothy and we got into a routine of cranking up the fire, drinking lots of tea, eating chocolate and generally relaxing.

The defeated team walks back to Sheneval, Carn Dearg behind.

The next day we tried to do a traverse of the most prominent peak in the area, An Teallach, but were beaten back by deep snow, wind and cloud. So bag to tea and a cheese board at the bothy. On our last day we walked out in deep, fresh snow, getting a wee bit off route before the cloud parted for final beautiful views.

More pics on my gallery.