Splendid isolation on the Munsary trail
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
YOU know you’re heading for an out-of-the-way spot when even the official signboard calls it the "back of beyond". Not content with that, it announces with a dramatic flourish that you are now on "the road to nowhere".
My kind of place, in other words. But would it justify the big build-up? There was only one way to find out.
I was at the beginning of the track leading to Munsary peatlands nature reserve, owned and managed by the wild plant conservation charity Plantlife. Although not far from the A9 at the Causewaymire, this is a delightfully secluded corner of Caithness where the gently sloping landscape dips down to the shores of Loch Stemster.
I had left the car at the nearby Achavanich stone circle as I wanted to have a potter around this impressive prehistoric site before starting on the Munsary trail. There are more than 30 standing stones, dating back some 4,000 years, set out in a horseshoe pattern overlooking the bowl-shaped loch.
Remnants of cremated bodies have been found here, deep inside the blanket peat. Close by are the scattered building blocks of a chambered cairn, around 1,000 years older than the stone circle itself. Was this whole area an ancient cemetery – or perhaps a site where human remains were offered to the gods?
It was all very intriguing, but I wasn’t going to dwell on the dark subject of ancient burial rituals on such a life-affirming day as this. It was October but it felt more like the height of summer as the last of the early cloud drifted away from the peaks of Morven and Scaraben to leave a morning of glorious sunshine.
I set off up the stony track skirting the north-west edge of the loch with open moorland ahead. It leads to a fragile, internationally important peatland habitat full of rare and delicate bog plants. Most of these are seen to best effect in spring or summer, it has to be said. Nevertheless I paused to take photos of some bogbean stems in a flat-calm pond and was able to spot a few other species along the way, helped by a series of information posts with signal boards tucked inside.
I passed a stone sheep-fank and it soon became clear that farming continues to work in harmony with nature here. There were hay bales in an adjacent field and a herd of native-breed cattle around the working farm of Ballachly.
From a distance it looks as though the track may now be coming to an end, but in fact it just gets a bit rougher as it carries on beyond the cluster of farm buildings; it’s impossible to go wrong. Wind turbines can be seen away to the left and to the right (some of them far too close to the Camster Cairns, if you ask me).
A Plantlife sign on a metal gate welcomes you to the start of the reserve, which covers some 3,058 acres. Pulling out one of the signal boards here, I was struck by its strangely utilitarian language: "Government Storage Facility Ahead." But it’s a tongue-in-cheek wording; there is no giant shed or warehouse on the horizon. The "storage facility" is none other than the vast surrounding peatland, helping the wider environment by locking in around 1.9 million tonnes of carbon.
The trail ends at Munsary Cottage, sitting in splendid isolation amid the rolling moors. It was built as a shooting lodge around 1880 and was last used as a shepherd’s home in the 1920s. The cottage is boarded up now but the roof and walls are intact and it still looks just about habitable. There’s a bench in front and a modern standing stone bearing the Plantlife name and logo outside the boundary wall.
Further on are the Munsary dubh lochans, although there is no safe access to these.
I did take a wander in that general direction but after jumping over a few ditches and encountering dense, knee-high, marshy vegetation I could see why Plantlife advises you to visit the RSPB reserve at Forsinard if you want to see dubh lochans up close. (I’d been there just a few days earlier, as it happened.)
It was time to retrace my steps. There is no way you can do this walk as a circular route unless you want to risk sinking without trace in the bog. I did wonder, though, whether it would ever be logistically possible and financially feasible to create an archaeology-themed cycle trail giving a direct connection from Achavanich to the Camster Cairns, linking in to the existing track from Camster to the Hill o’ Many Stanes. Then of course there’s the Cairn o’ Get, and Yarrows...
Back to the present, however: did this really feel like the back of beyond? To be honest – no. Not with the agricultural activity, the very visible wind farms and the knowledge that I was on an established route with no realistic opportunity to veer off it. I’ve been to places within 10 miles of here that have a much greater sense of wilderness about them.
All the same, I’d had a rewarding couple of hours of peace, tranquillity and solitude (give or take the occasional Highland cow) in perfect autumn weather. It was a fine way to enjoy the fresh air and big skies of Caithness.
