London Evening Standard
Along Britain's Top Edge

My ticket is enticing enough by itself. I'm headed, it says, for "the most remote point in Britain" - where better to start a journey along Scotland's top edge? Waiting patiently by the tiny jetty at Keoldale, I'm reminded that time can be an elastic concept hereabouts. "When someone says a thing leaves at 11 that just means it won't leave before 11", as one local had put it.

But the sun glinted warmly enough on the shallow blue water of the Kyle of Durness, while a bright red boat sat on a nearby sandbank doing a startling imitation of a tropical postcard. Eventually the little passenger ferry appeared for the short chug across to where a minibus waited. I piled in with an Aussie couple fresh from Nepal. Eleven miles bouncing over beautiful but totally uninhabited moorland and we were at Cape Wrath.

Though the rocks of Britain's most northwesterly point once claimed three ships in a single night, what Sir Walter Scott called "this dread cape" actually takes its name from the Norse for "turning point" ("hvarf") rather than from a turbulent ocean that can send spray up hundreds of feet over some of the highest seacliffs in Britain.

For my visit, things at Britain's top left-hand corner were calm and clear. High above an inky blue sea, the Hebrides were smudges far to the south, Orkney a string of tiny marks to the east. But of signs of life there was just a deserted old lighthouse - one of several built by author Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather in the 1820s - and a few crumbling ruins through which sheep ambled casually. A huge red foghorn pointed seaward like an old 78 speaker fallen into silent reflection. Seabirds tracked across the dark ocean like tiny white dots.

Such elemental beauty marks much of Sutherland. Ben Hope (the most northerly of the Munros beloved of climbers, and dubbed "Queen of the North") and Ben Loyal loom over deserted moors. Sealochs like Loch Eriboll (unkindly christened Loch 'Orrible by WW2 servicemen posted here) thrust deep into the land from a shoreline fringed by deserted sandy beaches and tiny harbours.

I stay at Talmine where a converted church overlooks a scatter of tiny islands from the clifftop down which a path leads to a sandy beach dotted with wrecked boats. Only the odd sheep peering in my bedroom window obstructs the view. To get even closer to the Sutherland vibe, I call in "Croc". A genial Australian, Iain Morrison swapped the wilds of the Northern Territory for northern Scotland to run "Highland safaris", immediately earning the nickname Crocodile Sutherland in the process.

We drive along empty roads. Tiny Loch Hakel glinted as a burst of drizzle dappled waters that betrayed nothing of the gold fortune from Bonnie Prince Charlie's war fund flung into it by fleeing Jacobites in 1746 (much but not all recovered). At the coastal hamlet of Skerray, Croc told me how 16th century villagers gathered on the beach to hear Mass preached from a monastery across the narrow channel on the island of Neave.

In the late 1960s, meanwhile, TV cameras came to the adjacent island of Roan to capture life in one of Britain's most celebrated hippy communes. Now everything is quiet here apart from the lap of water against the harbour wall, and local colour is provided by brightly-hued lobster-pots rather than Flower Power gear.

We paused for a picnic lunch by a stone pier poking out onto the vast low-tide sands of the Kyle of Tongue, silent apart from the high-pitched calls of oystercatchers against a mist-muted landscape. The simple white Eriboll church adds a dash of beautiful strangeness thanks to its graveyard being placed almost two miles away on a western hillside so that the dead could face the setting sun.

While the area is a natural paradise, there are more refined pleasures. A strong arts and crafts scene has its epicentre in a cluster of studios converted from old army huts above the wild dune-back white sands of Balnakiel beach near Durness, where work by the likes of Danish ceramicist Lotte Grob would grace any London gallery. Fabulous local game and seafood also make for some excellent eating, often with the bonus of 5* locations (see box).

To bag my next geographical extremity, I posted myself. Postbuses are truly special delivery, a chance to pile into a dinky red mail van for a meander through beautiful countryside alongside the mailsacks and parcels for little more than the price of a couple of booklets of stamps.

I chatted to the postie as we drove east, while Sutherland flattened out into Caithness as we skirted the vast flat peat moor wilderness of the Flow Country. If you're travelling under your own steam, it's worth pausing at the old crofting village of Bettyhill, where the Strathnaver Museum provides evocative local history and Torrisdale beach a beautiful place to try and spot otters.

Delivered to Thurso, it felt strange to be in what counts as a metropolis hereabouts. Its relative bustle, though, couldn't mask an essentially nondescript character. I pushed on, pausing instead at Dunnet Bay to walk along the sweeping dune-backed beach, peering out to sea in search of dolphins or whales. Then it was on a couple more miles to Britain's top spot.

Standing on Dunnet Head, I'm further north than Moscow, and definitely further north than John O'Groats a dozen miles to the east, a geographical impostor that attracts coach parties and charity walkers despite it being nothing more than mainland Britain's fourth most northerly point. Even its oh-so-Scottish sounding name is fake, originating with a 15th century Dutch trader, Jan de Groet, who ran a ferry to nearby Orkney.

Dunnet Head, though, is the real McCoy, a mirror image of Cape Wrath with its storm-battered lighthouse (another of Robert Stevenson's efforts) and crumbling ruined buildings. Here, though, there's also a handful of careworn houses, crying out for a makeover - though they blend well enough with the wildness all around.

You can see why some folk might want to live here, though. It's hard not to get soulful gazing across the choppy Pentland Firth to where Hoy marks the beginning of Orkney a few miles offshore, ticking off a list of "most Northerly" things as you peer around. Look, Britain's most northerly mainland horse. Over there the most northerly clapped out Ford. And, blimey, over there, the most northerly embracing couple perched precariously on the end-of-Britain seacliffs.

This is an area haunted by memories. On Burifa Hill, just south of Dunnet Head, the remains of a once secret radar installation known simply as "Gee" rise from long grass, now picking up only the echoes of wartime ghosts rather than WW2 bombers.

At the southern end of the Dunnet peninsula, meanwhile, a tiny cove contains the beautiful ruins of Ham Harbour. It's a beautiful spot, the stones of its old quay glowing in late afternoon sun, silently reflecting on past bustle as they cling to the remnants of their old order.

You can walk from Ham to Scarfskerry, another of the area's old harbours, past chambered cairns, a ruined semaphore station, the remains of a chapel. From Castlehill, meanwhile, you can stroll either to Dwarwick Pier, where the Queen landed in the 1950s en route to visit her mother in her Caithness retreat at the Castle of Mey. Head for the secluded sandy beach at Murkle Bay in search of seals, or walk the trails of Dunnet Forest, a sheltered alternative if the Scottish weather lets you down.

By way of a dramatic coda, Duncansby Head just east of John O'Groats marks the end of the Scotland’s top edge with a pair of giant exclamation marks. Out of an ocean churned by tidal races, whirlpools and waterswells known as the Bores of Duncansby, two huge rocks rise to strange, sharp points. They're like nothing other than giant wizards' hats - a magic end to a magic journey.

FACTBOX
Cloisters in Talmine: +44 (0)1847 601 286, cloistertal.demon.co.uk

Dunnet Head Tea Rooms: +44 (0)1847 851 774, dunnethead.iberacal.com

Highlander Outback Safaris (based at Talmine): +44 (0)1847 601 286,
croc@highlanderoutback.com

Cape Wrath ferry and minibus operate May-September, ferry information from +44 (0)1971 511376, minibus details from +44 (0)1971 511287. Tourist information from Visit Scotland (visitscotland.com).

TOP EDGE DINING
Beside the Western shore of Loch Eriboll, Port-na-Con (01971 511 367) is a lovely B&B whose restaurant gives simple twists to fresh local produce such as trout in oatmeal or smoked salmon pate with rum and molasses. Loch Eriboll oysters, meanwhile, often feature on the menu at Rowan House (01971 511 347), another fine B&B with a superb setting on the west side of the loch.

The 200-year-old Cape Wrath Hotel (01971 511 212) sits above the Keoldale jetty on the Kyle of Durness, good bistro food and gorgeous views from its restaurant making up for its slightly austere character.

Farther east, the Forss Country House Hotel (01847 861 201) has a beautiful dining room set around a carved Adam fireplace. The menu includes the likes of smoked venison with hawthorn jelly, raspberry cranachan and more than 200 malt whiskies.