Hike date = May 22, 2024. This was Day 5 of a week of guided hiking in the Wildes of Assynt.

The gently rolling loop from Stoer Head lighthouse to the Old Man of Stoer and back was a good follow-up to the previous day’s more demanding trek to the summit of Suilven. Clocking in at 7.5 km (4.5 miles) and a total elevation gain of just 284 meters (134 net), I rate it family-friendly. Just watch young ones on the stretch that parallels the sea, where there’s a steep drop off of up to 100 meters.

If you prefer to watch a video about this hike instead of reading the rest of this post, watch Mr GeoK’s Relive video recap.

Getting There

Our whole group piled into the van for the now familiar drive along the A835 to route A837 past Ardvreck Castle. Then we were into new territory for the week, continuing on A837 to B869. Once on the secondary road, we drove another 11 km (7 miles) to the spacious parking lot for Stoer Lighthouse. Total driving distance = 75 km (46 miles) in just under 1.5 hours. That was enough time for me to notice that one member of our group seemed to have developed a dry cough. This became important later in our trip.

The parking lot a Stoer Lighthouse was spacious. No toilet facilities that I can recall. A few members of our group were intrigued by the fact you can stay at the lighthouse, which contains two self-catering apartments.

Outbound

We assessed the heavy cloud cover and very light rain conditions and opted to wear rain shells from the start. We’d all be advised to pack waterproof hiking boots for the trip, which turned out to be essential on this trek.

The trail is marked with a sign, and turned out to be a loop hike. Our guide led us clockwise around the loop, which meant we headed almost directly north from the parking lot. There are several roughly parallel trails, running roughly parallel to the cliff tops but at varying distances from the steep drop off.

The view of Stoer Lighthouse grew ever distant as we trekked along.

We spotted the odd splash of color on and among the boulders dotting the rolling landscape.

There were also a few grazing sheep.

Mostly, though, we had views of waves crashing over rocks below, and of the undulating landscape.

The rain was a little more persistent by the time we reached the best views of the Old Man of Stoer – a standalone sea stack. This made it hard to get the right white balance and any kind of sharpness in our images, but we did our best.

We carried on to get a closer look at the sea stack, and our guide told us it wasn’t until 1968 that anyone successfully climbed to the top. We spotted evidence of more recent climbing activity through our telephoto lenses.

This is also where we ate our packed lunches. It was a standing lunch, on account of the wet ground. Despite the dampness, our spirits were high.

Return

We returned via a slightly more inland track, in order to see a few more things. First up? Some gull nests on a relatively sheltered bluff. There were also ground nesting birds in the area.

Our next stop was the trig point at Sithean Mor. This was where we finally gave in to the persistent rain, donning rain pants and pulling rain covers over our packs.

We were a much more colorful group as we trekked towards a couple of active peat briquette harvesting sites.

En route, I stopped for a few minutes to admire the grasses just off the shoreline of a lochen near the transmitter pylons at Sithean Beag.

At the peat harvesting site, our guide expanded on some of the themes for the day: the clearances, crofters and landlords, feudal estates, grassroots land trusts, and historic rights to harvest peat.

These were the only active peat harvesting sites we saw over our 2.5 weeks in Scotland. All the other peat-related activities we observed were geared to restoration of previously harvested / otherwise damaged peat bogs, which play an important role in carbon sequestration.

From there we carried on to a narrow, unpaved road, with several ruined buildings along either side. These are the remains of a World War II outpost. Some of the stone walls have been supplemented with lengths of metal fencing and now serve as sheep pens.

After that, it was but a short walk back to the parking lot, where we piled into the van for the next installment of the day’s adventures.

SUMMARY

Clocking in at 7.5 km, this 3 hour 45 minute ramble was just the ticket after the previous day’s grind up Suilven. Our guide shared a lot of local history with us over the course of the morning, which made it a very enjoyable half-day – despite the rain!