Coigach and Assynt

Coigach and Assynt Review

Drive north of Ullapool on the A835 into Coigach and Assynt, and you enter a different kind of landscape. Here you won't find the broad, steep flanks of great hills that hem you in, as you would in the Great Glen or Glencoe. Instead, in Wester Ross the mountains punch out of the heathered terrain and seem to shift their position, hiding behind one another. Even their names seem different from those of the bens (mountain peaks or high hills) elsewhere: Cul Mor, Cul Beag, Stac Pollaidh, Canisp, Suilven. Some owe their origins to Norse words rather than to Gaelic—a reminder that Vikings used to sail this northern seaboard. Much of this area lies within the Inverpolly National Nature Reserve, now encompassed within the North West Highlands Geopark.