Last updated on June 3, 2023
“Who owns this landscape?
Has owning anything to do with love?
For it and I have a love-affair, so nearly human
we even have quarrels. –
When I intrude too confidently
it rebuffs me with a wind like a hand
or puts in my way
a quaking bog or loch
where no loch should be…
“… Who owns this landscape? –
The millionaire who bought it or
the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning
with a deer on his back?
“Who possesses this landscape? –
The man who bought it
or I
who am possessed by it?”
There’s no tour bus that will take you there. There is neither a cable-car nor a funicular railway to aid the ascent. It doesn’t appear on the list of Munros, or on Visit Scotland’s ‘Top 10 Attractions’ page; if you’re led by numbers, you’ll never make it here. It takes a ten kilometre hike over rough terrain just to reach the bottom – and the climb up the side is steep and unremitting. But I would wager nonetheless, that when God goes camping, it is here that he chooses to pitch his tent.
The mountain is called Suilven, pronounced ‘soola-venn’; the name is a combination of Old Norse and Gaelic, and means “Pillar Mountain”. The poem with which I introduced it is “A Man in Assynt” by Norman MacCaig; Assynt is the rugged, water-drenched corner of the northwestern Highlands of Scotland in which the mountain is to be found.
We arrived by water, which is the easiest route, hiring a boat at Elphin and sailing it up Loch Veyatie. We disembarked at a little beach by the north end of the loch, and tackled the mountain from the southern side. On emerging onto the summit ridge, a golden eagle came jetting up on the thermals and coasted around us for a few minutes. It was at that moment that this mountain possessed me too.
* * *
There are routes in from Elphin, Inverkirkaig, Lochinver and the western end of Loch Assynt. Hiring a boat with an engine is only realistic from Elphin – though if you can get your hands on a packraft, a paddle through the labyrinth of lochs that surround the peak is an excellent way to spend a day.
To get to the start of the paths is easiest by car, but possible by bus too; the service 809 connects Ullapool to Elphin, Lochinver, and the Loch Assynt trailhead. This allows a through-hike from one to the other.
For accommodation, there are assorted hotels and hostels scattered around the area (the Inchnadamph is one I can vouch for – the bar in particular). There’s a bothy at Suileag, with a copy of the collected works of Norman MacCaig; this is a very fine place to spend an evening with a dram, reading by candlelight.
Ideally, though, you want to take your tent; the summit has enough flat ground available to pitch one. From this vantage point, you’ll see the sun rise and set over some of the finest terrain in all of Europe – and you’ll own a piece of a dream for evermore.
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