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Loch an Ruathair

Loch an Ruathair is a long, quiet freshwater loch set on the wild edge of Sutherland, about three miles (5 km) north of the hamlet of Kinbrace. It sits within the treeless moorland of Achentoul Forest, where the single-track A897 and the Far North Line railway run shoulder to shoulder right along the water's edge on the drive between Helmsdale and the Flow Country. There are no ticket booths, no car park attractions and no crowds here—this is a landscape loch you pass through, pull aside for, or glimpse from a train window. Its appeal is exactly that: open water framed by the rounded hills of Creag Sail a'Bhaithaich and Ben Griam Beg, the railway curving across the head of the loch, and the great peat wilderness of the Flow Country beginning just to the north.