Torridon: beautiful enough to frighten you
In one of the old books I have bought and read, a traveller describes this part of the Highlands by declaring that “none but God can combine such beauty with such horror”. You don’t often find that sort of recommendation in a visitor guide these days, but looking up at Torridon’s mountains beneath a lowering sky, I can understand how the writer arrived at it. The same rock faces that look magnificent in sunshine become a considerably more intimidating prospect as cloud gathers around them, particularly if you are trying to find a way through rather than simply enjoying the view. Guests sometimes mention Mordor, which suggests that despite all the comforts of modern travel, these mountains haven’t entirely lost their ability to unsettle us.
Looking at Beinn Eighe, Liathach and Beinn Alligin, I can understand another writer reaching for the description “the very skeleton of the earth”. There is so little disguising the structure of these mountains that you can follow layers of sandstone across their faces, although imagining them as sand carried by rivers roughly a billion years ago requires rather more effort. Successive periods of erosion and glaciation have cut into that ancient rock, carving the gullies and corries we see today. Above the darker slopes, Beinn Eighe’s pale quartzite can easily be mistaken for lingering snow, particularly on a day when cloud allows only occasional glimpses of the heights.
What interests me in those older descriptions is how readily wonder becomes apprehension. We can admire a threatening sky knowing that warmth and shelter are waiting in the car, whereas a traveller uncertain of the route, the next river crossing or somewhere to sleep had rather more to consider. For some, inherited Christian associations between the north, darkness and evil added another discomfort to the journey. Read alongside ideas of Ultima Thule, the distant edge of the known world, an account describing country “as uninhabitable as it was uninhabited” begins to reveal the traveller’s expectations as much as the place itself. People did live here, of course, and what appeared forbidding to a stranger was the country they knew as home.
The road to Lower Diabaig brings those two perspectives together beautifully. Leaving the NC500 at Torridon, we continue through Inveralligin and across rocky ground before descending towards houses and a harbour tucked into an immense setting of rock and water. It is one of the grandest views I know in the North Highlands, and I would give it considerably more time than it takes to photograph it through an open window. Down beside the shore, the presence of a community makes those old declarations of uninhabitable wilderness seem rather presumptuous, although a squall coming across the water might restore some sympathy for their authors. In the audio blogcast, we explore more of those travellers’ accounts and the mixture of fear and fascination Torridon inspired.
To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.