08 · Twelve hours · from Invergordon, Inverness or Fort Augustus · Best April to October
Wester Ross, from Invergordon
5 photographs · Silent Glen
In short
Built around a ship’s day in port and run for anyone else who wants it — Corrieshalloch Gorge, the pink sand at Gruinard, Gairloch, and the old pinewood at Beinn Eighe, home over Glen Docherty. Twelve hours, and the clock is the point.
How the day runs
Twelve hours, five stops, and none of it fixed.
Open a stop for the detail, or show it on the map.
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Start You’ll be collected
From the gangway at Invergordon, or your door in Inverness. Ships’ days start when the ship says.
- 01
Corrieshalloch Gorge 45 min
A box canyon with a Victorian suspension bridge strung across it. Visitor centre, and the first proper facilities of the day.
Details CloseA slot in the rock about a mile long and sixty metres deep, with the Falls of Measach dropping into the top of it and a wire suspension bridge from the 1870s hung across the middle. You walk out onto the bridge, it moves, and you look straight down. We stop at the visitor centre rather than the layby — it is where the path starts, and it has the facilities, which on a day this long is worth planning around. Fifteen minutes from the car to the bridge, and everybody talks about it afterwards.
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Pass by Dundonnell and Little Loch Broom
An Teallach on the left for twenty minutes, if the top is out.
- 02
Gruinard Bay 45 min
Pink sand, and an island with a genuinely extraordinary history.
Details CloseThe sand here is pink, from the Torridonian sandstone behind it, and on a bright day the water over it goes an unreasonable colour for this latitude. The island out in the bay is Gruinard, which the government used for anthrax trials in 1942 and did not declare clean again until 1990. It is safe now and it is not a place we land; it is just an astonishing thing to be looking at from a beach this pretty.
- 03
Gairloch 1 h 15
Lunch, the harbour, and the beach if the tide is doing the right thing.
Details CloseThe one proper village on this stretch, and where lunch happens. There is a harbour with boats actually working out of it, a long beach, and the Torridon hills across the loch. Nothing here needs booking or organising, which after a morning of driving is exactly what is wanted.
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Pass by Loch Maree
Twelve miles of it, with Slioch standing over the far shore.
- 04
Beinn Eighe 1 h 30
Britain’s first nature reserve, and old pinewood you can walk into. We stop at the visitor centre first.
Details CloseDeclared in 1951, the first National Nature Reserve in Britain — not a national park, which is a different and much newer thing Scotland only has two of. What matters on the ground is the pinewood on the shore of Loch Maree: genuine remnant Caledonian forest, self-seeded, with two waymarked trails going up into it. One is an hour, one is a good deal more. We start at the visitor centre, which is where the trails leave from and where the facilities are, and take whichever walk the day and the legs are up for.
- 05
Glen Docherty 20 min
A layby, and the whole of Loch Maree laid out below you going the other way.
Details CloseClimbing east out of Kinlochewe the road tops out and the entire loch appears behind you, running away north-west between the hills with Slioch at the side of it. Ten minutes, one layby, and it is the photograph most people end up keeping from the day.
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End Back at your door
Back at the terminal with time in hand — we work backwards from your all-aboard, not forwards from breakfast.
Durations rather than times, on purpose. The order moves, stops get longer or get dropped, and the whole thing bends around the weather and around you — Dan will tell you on the morning what the day actually wants to be.
Map and imagery by Google, which sets its own cookies.
The next five days at Gairloch
Met Office ·
Forecasts this far out are a shape rather than a promise, which is the whole reason the day is not fixed until the morning.
Highlights
- The suspension bridge over Corrieshalloch, fifteen minutes from the car and straight down
- Pink sand at Gruinard, and the island with the anthrax history out in the bay
- Remnant Caledonian pinewood at Beinn Eighe, Britain’s first nature reserve
- Loch Maree from the top of Glen Docherty, which is the photograph people keep
- Planned backwards from your all-aboard time, with an hour of slack built in
What’s included
In the price
- Collection at the cruise terminal gate, or from your door if you are staying locally
- The car to yourselves for the whole day — one party a day, nobody else aboard
- All mileage and charging
- A route planned backwards from your all-aboard time, with slack built in
- Free cancellation up to 48 hours before, for a full refund
Not included
- Lunch at Gairloch, which you buy there.
- Nothing on this route is ticketed. Corrieshalloch and Beinn Eighe are both free to walk into.
The day
A ship’s day, planned backwards
If you are off a cruise, the only number that matters is your all-aboard time, and everything else on this page is arranged behind it. We take that time first, subtract the drive home, subtract an hour of slack for weather and roadworks and a stag standing in the road, and plan the day into what is left.
That is not how a coach excursion works, because a coach has to average everybody. With one car and one party we can leave a stop early, skip one entirely, or sit at Gairloch for another half hour, and still be at the terminal in good time. Nobody has ever enjoyed the last hour of a shore excursion that is running late.
Why west and not the obvious way
Every ship calling at Invergordon sells the same two days: the whisky one, and the Loch Ness one. Both are fine. Both also involve you seeing what four coaches in front of you are seeing.
West is a longer drive and a better day. It is the coast at Gruinard, the gorge at Corrieshalloch, and old pinewood at Beinn Eighe — none of which has a queue, because the coaches cannot make the timings work on those roads and do not try.
Not only for the ships
The same day runs from Inverness or Fort Augustus for anybody staying here, without the clock-watching. It is a big loop either way, and twelve hours is honest rather than cautious: a hundred and sixty miles of it is coast road and single track, and most of the value of the day is in the driving somebody else is doing.
Book now
Tell us the week. We’ll tell you the weather.
Every day is quoted individually — party size, pick-up point and how far you want to go. Expect a reply from Dan within a working day, and a written itinerary before you pay anything.
Thank you. Dan will reply within a working day.
silentglentours@gmail.comThe other days
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