Gairloch sits on the North Coast 500, the loop driving route that has redrawn tourism on the north-west Highland coast since its launch in 2015. From Inverness you head north on the A835 toward Ullapool, branch off at Garve for the A832, and follow it past Loch Maree to the coast. The road carries on north through Gairloch, past Inverewe Gardens at Poolewe, around Little Loch Broom, and rejoins the A835 at Corrieshalloch. Westerbus 700 runs once on weekdays from Gairloch to Inverness via Achnasheen, Strathpeffer and Dingwall, taking about two and a half hours, and turns around late afternoon. There is no other public transport beyond a single school bus to Torridon. You really do need a car.

The shoreline scenery is the point. Gairloch Marine Life Centre runs daily wildlife-spotting boats out of the harbour in season, and the local operators know where the porpoises feed, where the white-tailed eagles nest along the cliffs, and which beaches the otters work in the early mornings. To the south of the village, the B8056 runs along the 'overside' shore through Badachro, with the Badachro Inn perched at the water's edge as one of the better-loved pub stops on the west coast. To the north, the B8021 climbs out past the beaches at Big Sand and on towards Melvaig and the lighthouse at Rua Reidh, twelve miles up the coast. The lighthouse, built in 1912 and converted to a B&B, marks the northwestern tip of the Gairloch peninsula.

Down the lane from Poolewe, along the east side of the Melvaig peninsula, stands a memorial that catches a lot of visitors by surprise. Loch Ewe was the assembly anchorage for the Arctic convoys that ran supplies from Britain to Russia between 1941 and 1945, the brutal northern route that saw merchant ships and their escorts pick their way past German submarines, Luftwaffe bombers, and ice floes to reach Murmansk and Archangel. Some 3,000 Allied sailors died on the route. The memorial commemorates them, set on a quiet point looking out toward the loch where so many of those convoys formed up. It is one of the more affecting small monuments on the British coast, in part because it is so easy to drive past it without knowing.

Gairloch's village centre, scattered across three small clusters at the Harbour, Achtercairn, and Strath, holds a quirky range of stops. Buddha by the Sea, an offbeat gift shop and small bookshop with a café and a fine view across the bay, is everyone's favourite Highland anomaly. The Old Inn, near the harbour, has been pulling pints for generations and runs reliably busy in the evenings. Badachro Distillery, on the south shore, produces whisky, gin, and vodka in small batches; there are no formal tours, but the shop is open in season. Lochewe Distillery further north closed in 2017. For sleep, options range from wild camping (legal but punished by the midges in summer) to Sands Caravan & Camping on the north shore, plus a handful of small hotels and B&Bs throughout the village. As of late 2024, mobile coverage in Gairloch was 4G from EE, O2 and Vodafone, patchy on the approach roads, and 5G not yet on the agenda.