Assynt

Suilven rises alone from the Assynt moorland like a stone cathedral without a congregation — a mountain so individually shaped it looks planted rather than formed. The geology changes every few miles here, and some of the rock beneath your feet is among the oldest exposed anywhere on Earth.

Assynt, in north-west Sutherland, is defined by its inselbergs — isolated peaks standing apart on a platform of Lewisian gneiss almost three billion years old, so each profile reads instantly across the moor. Suilven, Stac Pollaidh and Quinag are each architecturally distinct, their shapes cut by the differential erosion of Torridonian sandstone, and climbing any one of them means rising above a moonscape of lochans with no neighbouring summit to share the sky. The Inchnadamph bone caves have yielded human remains 4,500 years old alongside the bones of arctic fox, lynx and brown bear — a Scotland almost unrecognisable today — and much of the land is community-owned, crofters having bought their own estate in a landmark 1993 buyout. Lochinver, the main settlement, bakes pies famous enough to justify the detour on their own.