A Sense of Silence

To gain understanding of a place is to spend unhurried time there, walking its old paths, touching the bark of trees, sleeping beneath the stars, meeting whomever crosses our paths. It’s to let the environment seep into you.

The days we spent on the trail in the far northern reaches of the Scottish Highlands followed a routine of sorts. I’d met with an old friend and our plan was loose: head north on the trails we fancied, stopping when we wanted, popping into villages when we wanted, and going the pace we wanted. We weren’t chasing a fastest known time or even a mileage, we just needed to end somewhere with a train station. There was no single path, no waymarkers, no comforting fingerposts pointing the way. Just wild country and the miles ahead. This was a slow journey of discovery, and a journey of reconnection.

The days followed a rhythm. Each morning, with the first hint of light, we eased into the ritual – hot coffee cradled in cold hands, water bottles filled from clear streams. We hoisted our packs onto our shoulders, tightened our laces, studied the map, and turned north once again. But beyond this, every day was wildly different. The landscape shapeshifted as often as the sky with the ancient Scots pine forests, wide expanses of moorland, steep mountain passes, and white sandy beaches. Rivers ran high after rain; sometimes impassable, sometimes inviting a barefoot dip that left us breathless.

A quiet world of sound

There is a particular quality to the silence of the Scottish Highlands, or at least the sense of silence. But it’s not an empty silence at all, even in low winds, there’s a noise, but not the constant hum of city streets, but a deep, resonant one, rich with the sounds of wind threading through glens, the call of a distant ptarmigan, the soothing rush of water over rock.

In the ancient forests, this sensory impression, is more acute. The tread of our boots is the dominant sound – over the near-continuous banter of two old friends catching up on life, that is. In the forests, there was colour too. Heather and new sprouts of fern, moths and butterflies, sunlight through the trees, bright orange fungi.

Emerging through the forest, we began our trek through the emptiness of Assynt. The great mountain Suilven dominated the scenery, a rugged whaleback ridge filling it with drama. Suilven, like its neighbours Canisp and Quinag, is a monolith, its ancient Torridonian sandstone worn down to eroded protrusions by millions of years of wind and rain. This is a powerful landscape, dominated by mountains that have stood for a frankly mind-fizzling amount of time. We were impossibly fleeting visitors here. The terrain made a far greater impression on us than we ever could on it.

Suilven is a mountain that appears out of nowhere, its sheer, defiant bulk rising from the flatter cnoc-and-lochan landscape of Assynt. Torridonian sandstone is some of the oldest rock in Europe, dating back more than a billion years – and sitting on a bed of Lewisian gneiss that is more than twice as old again. Human history here is as layered as the landscape. Traces of Neolithic settlements can still be found, and the ruins of Ardvreck Castle, perched on a promontory above Loch Assynt, tell the story of Clan MacLeod’s power and its eventual fall to the Mackenzies in the 17th century. The more recent Highland Clearances from the 18th and 19th centuries left their mark too, with abandoned crofts across the hills – reminders of the displacement of people.

The edge of Assynt

From Ardvreck Castle, we walked along the shores of Loch Assynt and the many other small lochs that flood this low-lying region. The land here is open and wild, a patchwork of peat bog, rocky outcrops, and long, empty glens, with the hulking mass of Quinag behind us. A small wooden shelter by the water’s edge offered a break from the wind. We took off our backpacks, got the stove out, and with the quiet hiss of gas our water came to the boil while we brought out the Bialetti Moka for a coffee. There was no rush. Just the slow, simple pleasure of a hot drink on the trail.

Then onwards, the track widening as we neared Lochinver, a a small town on the edge of Assynt – and the first real settlement we’d seen for miles. At the Lochinver Larder – we later learned legendary in these parts – we ate, officially, Scotland’s Best Meat Pie, the venison and cranberry. We sat on the harbour wall and debated signing up to its ‘pies by post’ scheme.

From Lochinver, the path threaded through rocky hills and between quiet lochans reflecting the sky. We took the narrow trail towards Achmelvich Bay, packs full of provisions, the land changing beneath our feet. Peat and heather gave way to white sand dunes. The smell of salt was on the wind. The bay was empty when we arrived, the sea shifting between deep turquoise and deeper blue as the sun fell towards the horizon. Between rock pools scuttled tiny crabs, half-buried in wet sand, vanishing as we dipped our hands into the water. We cooked dinner on the beach, huddled against the cool evening breeze.

The night settled in slow and soft, the sky burning in streaks of orange and pink, then cooling into the deep blues of twilight. Lying back on our ruckscks, we listened to the pull of the tide, the distant cry of gulls.

And then, as morning broke, we woke again. Coffee. Boots laced. Packs lifted.

North

My overriding memory of those days is one of joy. Unbridled happiness. The great privilege of spending days on the trails, the deep feeling of freedom, and developing a genuine connection with nature – everything we needed on our backs. And then, each day over, we ate, we rested, a fire before bed, and snuggled up warm inside our sleeping bags, tired and content.