Ullapool sits on the eastern shore of Loch Broom, sixty miles northwest of Inverness on the A835. The town centre is a striking piece of late-Georgian and early-Victorian planning: low-rise, regular, oriented to the water. Any walk that gains a little height - up onto Ullapool Hill at the eastern edge of town, or out along the lane toward the north - rewards you quickly with a long view across Loch Broom toward Beinn Ghobhlach and the mountains beyond. The town has a population of about 1,500. Most visitors pass through it on the way to or from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, the Calmac ferry running year-round, twice a day Monday to Saturday and once on Sundays in winter, with a second Sunday sailing added April to October. In summer the boat sells out, and even foot passengers are well advised to book. Be at the pier 45 minutes before sailing or do not bother turning up.

Twelve miles south on the A835 lies Corrieshalloch Gorge - the deep ravine where the Abhainn Droma thunders 150 feet over the Falls of Measach into a 60-metre slot in the hills. There is a Victorian suspension footbridge across it and a viewing platform projecting into the gorge, maintained by the National Trust for Scotland. The Gaelic name is *Coire Shalach*, the *unattractive gorge*, a reminder that Highland aesthetics changed with the railways. To anyone trying to herd cattle through it, the gorge was a confounded nuisance. Closer to town, Ullapool Hill rises 270 metres east of the village, with clearly marked trails. Out at sea, the Summer Isles can be reached by boat trip on the sedate Summer Queen or on a faster RIB. Isle Martin offshore is a community-run nature reserve and bird sanctuary. Rhue Lighthouse - more correctly a beacon - marks the loch entrance and is a short walk from a lane off the A835.

Ullapool is small enough that you can walk anywhere, and it has a music scene out of proportion to its size. The McPhail Centre on Mill Street hosts performing arts year-round. The Ullapool Book Festival arrives in mid-May. The Guitar Festival fills three days of acoustic music at the McPhail Centre - in 2025 the dates are 3-5 October. The town pipe band parades through the centre on summer Thursday evenings. Highland Liquor Company has its gin distillery shop a block back from the ferry pier. The Saturday market runs along Quay Street from April to September, with organic vegetables, seafood, smoked cheese and fish, and bakery from local producers. On clear nights, walk a mile out of town to get clear of the streetlight bloom and you can pick out the Milky Way - except from May to July, when the sky stays in what the locals call the *simmer dim*, a brief twilight rather than full dark.

Ullapool is one of the natural way-stations on the North Coast 500, the motoring loop around the far north of Scotland. South leads back toward Gairloch via the Arctic Convoy Museum and Inverewe Gardens, then on toward Torridon. North goes to Achiltibuie and the Summer Isles, and on past Lochinver and into the Geopark country toward Durness. The North West Highlands Geopark extends from Torridon through Ullapool up to Durness, organised around the extraordinary geology of the Lewisian gneiss, some of the oldest exposed rock in Europe. Mobile signal in the village is decent on EE, O2 and Vodafone, basic on Three; the approach road on the A835 has only EE coverage; 5G has not arrived here. Plan to disconnect a little. The setting will do most of the disconnecting for you - a Telford grid of houses, a working harbour, a loch that runs back into the mountains, and a town small enough that the pipe band is everybody's neighbour.