Almost no one lives on the cape. The Ure family, who run what is claimed to be Britain's most remote cafe, the Ozone, are the sole residents, holed up in a converted lighthouse keeper's cottage. The seabirds outnumber them spectacularly. Over 50,000 nest in the cliffs each summer - puffins, razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes, fulmars - making the cape an internationally important breeding site. Out at sea, harbour porpoises and bottle-nosed dolphins ride the currents where the Atlantic meets the Pentland Firth. Golden eagles patrol the moor inland. Red deer drift through the heather. The Ministry of Defence's Special Area of Conservation designation extends two kilometres out from the coast and covers 1,015 hectares of moor, dune and montane habitat that runs - improbably - down to sea level.

Since 1933 the cape has also been a live-firing range. Up to 120 days a year, military exercises shut the road and the ferry, and disused vehicles are blown apart on the moor. The Royal Air Force drops bombs offshore. The Royal Navy shells the cliffs. Wildlife campaigners have raised concerns about the nesting seabirds, and in 2002 a shell fired during an exercise landed eight miles off-target, near houses at the mouth of Loch Eriboll. The MoD has since tightened procedures. In 2012 the ministry tried to buy 24 hectares around the lighthouse from the Northern Lighthouse Board - locals organised, lobbied, and the purchase was dropped the following year. A community buyout in 2017 secured part of the cape for the people who actually live nearby.

Between 2,000 and 6,000 people make it to Cape Wrath each year, and almost all of them work for it. The road in - the U70 - is unclassified, single-track, and ends at a Ministry of Defence checkpoint at Achiemore. From the Durness side, the only access is a small passenger ferry across the Kyle of Durness to Cape Wrath jetty, then an eleven-mile minibus journey to the lighthouse. The Cape Wrath Marathon turns the whole exercise into a race: 11 miles out from the ferry to the lighthouse, 11 back, then 4 more on the mainland to Durness Community Centre. None of it is suspended for weather. Almost all of it can be suspended for live firing. The tourism is worth between £400,000 and £620,000 a year to the Durness area - a small economy built on the appeal of going to the end of the road and finding nothing there.