There's a whitewashed cottage at the end of a 15-mile single-track road on the Coigach Peninsula in the Scottish Highlands that one Somerset family has been returning to for 25 years. The village is Achiltibuie — a 12-hour drive from home, longer than it would take to reach the South of France — and the writer behind this love letter now brings her own children to repeat the same simple routine: icy swims, seal-spotting, pick-and-mix from the village store, and dinghy trips out to the Summer Isles.
What's the draw? Achnahaird Bay's empty white-sand beaches and startlingly turquoise water, the brooding presence of Stac Pollaidh overhead, and, on the clearest days, a glimpse of the Outer Hebrides on the horizon. The weather flips from tropical to arctic in half an hour, so locals simply stop checking the forecast — a kind of freedom in itself.
The area is also quietly changing. Tanera Mòr, the largest and only inhabited Summer Isle — once a Viking anchorage in the 11th century — was bought in 2017 by financier Ian Wace, who has reportedly poured £100 million into restoring it. Its cottages and old post office have been reimagined as stylish bothies and communal spaces hosting retreats, mostly for public sector workers. Next year the team is set to reopen the Summer Isles Hotel in Achiltibuie itself, a pared-back bolthole that may finally tempt travellers who've been scared off by that winding road.
The days here have a rhythm worth copying. Start late (the midges demand it) with sausage baps cooked on the beach below Acheninver Hostel, then cycle to Old Dornie Harbour, where fishermen haul langoustine crates onto the jetty. Launch a canoe from the slipway and you unlock Isle Ristol, a Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve with seals lounging offshore and a long white beach the family calls, without irony, 'the Caribbean beach' — ideal for cowrie-hunting, toasted marshmallows and dune lounging until the midges force a retreat.
Food is simple but excellent: fish and chips through the hatch at Am Fuaran Bar (the peninsula's only pub, jukebox playing, catch of the day), buttery scallops with hand-cut chips inside, and the village shop's smoked fish, dressed crab and legendary chocolate brownies for picnics. There's a woodfired mobile sauna that tours the best beaches, and the Bothan on Badentarbet pier — restored as part of the Tanera project — for post-dip coffee, cake and dolphin-spotting with binoculars while the CalMac ferry chugs past towards Stornoway.
If cabin fever strikes, Ullapool is nearly an hour away, with Cult Café for the best coffee for miles, the Seafood Shack for lunch and live music at The Ceilidh Place. But honestly, staying put is the point: bikes, picnics, swims and walks on repeat, with no ferry timetable to worry about — just that long, long road suspending real life for a while.
Story via Condé Nast Traveller UK.