Achiltibuie Stores

Achiltibuie Stores is the only shop on the Coigach peninsula and the practical anchor of the small string of crofting townships along its single-track road. The village of Achiltibuie itself is fifteen miles off the A835 by the longest single-track route in this part of Sutherland, Drumrunie, the foot of Stac Pollaidh, the Knockan Crag side road, and the slow approach round the cnoc-and-lochan landscape to the coast, and arriving here without checking what’s open at the shop is a familiar mistake.

The stores carries the full small-village range: groceries, frozen and chilled, the post office counter, the off-licence, a paper-and-stationery shelf, gas and a fuel pump out the front. Coigach has no other petrol station; the next nearest is back in Ullapool by the same fifteen-mile road, which makes the pump a working necessity for the township rather than a tourist convenience.

The setting is the second draw. Achiltibuie looks south-west across the Badentarbat Bay to the Summer Isles, Tanera Mòr, Tanera Beag, Priest Island and the smaller skerries, and the Coigach landscape behind the village is some of the most striking in the north-west: Stac Pollaidh, Cul Beag and Cul Mor in close view, the rising ground of Ben Mor Coigach to the south.

Standard village-shop hours; reduced through winter. Current opening at the Achiltibuie Stores website.