Sunnyside Studio

If climbing mountains is not quite to your taste, a gentler but equally rewarding walk can be had on the peninsula itself. From the car park at the lighthouse, a pleasant path winds northwards along the clifftops to the point, with specacular seascapes all the way.

The most impressive feature is this sea stack, the Old Man of Stoer. Sometimes climbers can be seen testing their skills on its 200ft of near vertical rock.

The whole of the hummocky Quinag ridge can be seen from Stoer, with its highest summit on Sail Gharbh in the centre. The Spidean Coinich summit, shown on the previous shot, is on the extreme right of the ridge. From the west, Quinag is a far more formidable challenge.

This is another view from the summit of Spidean Coinich. The first image in this gallery was taken from the centre of this view. The southern end of Loch Assynt is on the right and Castle Ardvreck is just visible again on its left hand shore. Ben More Assynt broods in the distance.

Quinag is a long ridge running from north to south with several individual summits and subsidiary ridges. This is the most southerly and accessible summit called Spidean Coinich, which can be reached in an easy walk, directly from the road. Other routes along the ridge have steeper sections and are more demanding.

In the middle foreground, on the edge of Loch Assynt, is the ruin of Ardvreck Castle. It was built at the end of the sixteenth century by the Macleods, but later seized by the Mackenzies. Nearby is another ruin, of Calda House built in 1660. Being close to the road, both are much photographed as foreground subjects.

This view is looking back to where the previous shot was taken, on the Stoer Peninsula, from the Spidean Coinich summit. Loch Assynt, looking like a sheet of blue glass, lies to the left. Beside it, the road to the fishing port of Lochinver, winds away into the distance. Many other lochans, hollows left by the scouring action of an ice sheet, dot the landscape.

This panorama, which only comes into view when the summit is reached, is a just reward for completing the last steep scramble.