Scotland
Rannoch Moor
Fifty square miles of nothing — Britain's last emptiness, crossed by one road and one railway.
Fifty square miles of peat bog, lochan and granite — among the emptiest landscapes in Britain, where a windless day falls so silent your own heartbeat intrudes. Rannoch Moor defeated every attempt at cultivation and settlement, and in return it has been left alone.
Rannoch Moor is one of Britain's last great wild spaces, a high plateau of blanket bog, scattered lochans and glacial erratics spreading between Glencoe and Loch Rannoch. The West Highland Line crosses it on a floating embankment — engineers laid the track on a mattress of brushwood, roots and ash because the peat was too soft for ballast — and Corrour station on the moor's northern rim has no road access at all, the remotest station in Britain. Bronze Age remains show that people tried to live here; none stayed. Writers from Robert Louis Stevenson to Irvine Welsh have reached for the moor's atmosphere of emptiness, geological drama and violent weather, and the lochans still catch pieces of sky the way they did before anyone had words for it.
Solo
Rannoch exists for the solo walker who craves genuine emptiness — crossing the moor on foot, compass in hand, isolates you like nowhere else in Britain.
Couple
The train to roadless Corrour and a dawn walk into the moor — shared wilderness reachable by public transport.
- Fifty square miles of bog, lochan and granite — Britain at its emptiest.
- The railway floats across the peat on a mattress of brushwood and ash.
- Corrour station has no road to it — the remotest platform in Britain.
- The moor defeated every attempt at settlement — Bronze Age remains show that people tried.
Venison stew and a whisky beside a peat fire in the middle of nowhere.
A hip-flask dram against the moor wind — Rannoch's most reliable warmth.
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