Norman McCaig Memorial

A simple stone cairn in the far northwest of Scotland marks where the poet Norman MacCaig spent his summers. It's not much to look at - just rocks piled on a hillside near Sutherland - but if you've read his work, you'll understand why locals bothered building it at all. MacCaig spent decades coming to this part of the Highlands, and his poems about the landscape are genuinely good. The memorial sits in rough moorland, the kind of place where you can actually see what he was writing about: lochs, mountains, that particular light you only get this far north.

This isn't a visitor attraction in any formal sense. There's no car park, no information board, no café. You find it on foot, usually as part of a wider walk through the area around Sutherland. That's rather the point. MacCaig wouldn't have wanted something fussy. Poetry types and serious walkers will get the most from a visit - it's a proper pilgrimage thing, a reason to spend time in genuinely remote countryside rather than a destination in itself.

If you're staying at Clachtoll Beach Campsite nearby, it makes a decent half-day expedition. Allow a couple of hours to reach it and potter about, longer if the weather's decent and you fancy exploring further. There's no admission charge - it's just there on the hills, free to find and contemplate. Go in summer when the days are long and the midges are only moderately vicious.