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After we left the Orkney Islands we ferried back to Scrabster and took the drive west along the north coast of mainland Scotland. It’s a shame the nights had already started to draw in, as we could tell even in the diminishing light that we were passing some amazing coastal scenery.

After a rather luxurious night in a B&B (in between two hostel stays), we made the trek to one of Scotland’s most isolated beaches. This is Sandwood Beach, and it can only be reached by a 4 mile walk in – and 4 miles back of course! As you can see from the grin on his face, Wes was in heaven!

We spent some lovely days hiking and exploring this natural wonderland, all from our base of the Achmelvich Youth Hostel. I think honestly we could have stayed for two or more weeks based near Lochinver and there’s no way we’d get bored. This area they call the Geopark, because of the unique geological formations all over. The oldest rocks in the world can even be found here. Absolutely fascinating, I probably should’ve studied geology, I am such a rock nerd. It is certainly the wild west as well, as there weren’t many people about at all. We managed to find a few geocaches during our express trip to the Northwest, but not nearly as many earthcaches as we could have found, if only we had more time!

This is the beach our youth hostel was on. You can see the peak on the right is Suilven, which we climbed while we were based there. It was possibly the toughest walk we’ve ever done.

The next photos are:

• Suilven from the ‘policeman’s helmet’ side, which is the peak we hiked up
• Me on the way back down to the saddle from the peak
• Suilven from the side, so you can see we went up to the saddle, then up to the right