Home » Book Reviews » Alfred Wainwright » Wainwright in Scotland by Alfred Wainwright
Possible spoilers ahead
This book is absolute bliss! I had left it unread for quite a while thinking it was just a coffee table book you flick through, just a guide book, but it is so much more than that as it reads like he’s actually talking to you and sharing his memories and grievances (!) of his trips, it all feels very personal with him sharing his thoughts as well as details about his favourite roads and mountains and paths and why. I love his writing style, it is both passionate and yet sometimes curt and humorous, and I Iove his passion for Scotland, it is very inspiring. This book was quite a revelation, and has made me search out his other books.
He’s doing a car journey from north to south, and doing short walks from the car. He starts at John O’Groats and goes all along the coast to Durness and Cape Wrath then down to Laxford Bridge and Scourie overlooking Handa Island, then to Kylesku with Eas Coul Aulin waterfall then to Lochinyer and the Mad Little Road of Sutherland (!) between Inverkirkaig and Achilibuie, which Wainwright says is his favourite road, and Stac Polly and the Summer Isles then to Ullapool and Loch Broom to Corrieshalloch Gorge then past Dundonnell and all the Munros in The Fannichs, including driving along Destitution Road (!), past what he calls ‘the last great wilderness’ between Little Loch Broom and Loch Maree, then down to Torridon and Coulin Forest and Sheldaig, around the Applecross Peninsula looking over at Skye, and the mountain pass of Bealach na Ba. It all just sounds wonderful and so inspiring. I most definitely want to do his driving tour round the Highlands of Scotland, although as it was written in the 1980s, I fear those beautiful roads and villages and views are probably not as isolated or untouched or uninhabited or tourist-free as when he wrote his book, and I imagine ironically he probably encouraged lots of visitors to all these places, similarly inspired like me!
