Suilven
Interesting facts
- Suilven's sandstone is around a billion years old, yet the Lewisian gneiss it rests on dates back as much as three billion years.
- Suilven was once thought to have poked above the last ice sheet as a nunatak, but dating of boulders left on its summit showed the ice buried it.
- The lower tops have plain Gaelic names: Meall Meadhonach means Middle Round Hill and Meall Beag Little Round Hill.
- Traversing the whole ridge demands very exposed scrambling, especially on the narrow crest between Meall Meadhonach and Meall Beag.
- Despite its fame, Suilven is not a Munro but a Graham, a Scottish hill between 2,000 and 2,500 feet high.
- A CalMac ferry named after the mountain, MV Suilven, sailed between Ullapool and Stornoway from 1974 to 1995 before moving to New Zealand and Fiji.
- In the 2017 film Edie, a widowed pensioner climbs Suilven to fulfil a long-held ambition.
- For the Star Wars series Ahsoka, scenes were filmed in Sutherland showing both Suilven and neighbouring Stac Pollaidh.
Why it is worth it
Seen from the coast at Lochinver, Suilven looks less like a mountain than a single tower of rock standing alone on a plain of bog and lochans. In reality it is a narrow ridge about two kilometres long, and from the side it shows three tops strung along a sheer-sided crest; from either end it appears as a sugarloaf. Its Norse name, from súla fjall, means "pillar mountain" – with the Gaelic beinn later substituted for the Norse word.
The highest point, Caisteal Liath ("grey castle"), stands at about 731 metres at the north-western end of the ridge; Meall Meadhonach in the middle reaches about 724 metres and Meall Beag at the south-eastern end about 660 metres. The mountain rises from the wild landscape of Assynt in western Sutherland, and its shape is a lesson in Scottish geology: a cap of Torridonian sandstone resting on a far older platform of Lewisian gneiss. The ice sheet of the last glaciation flowed over and around it, carving the steep flanks and the narrow teardrop plan. Its silhouette has inspired the Assynt poems of Norman MacCaig and appeared on screen in the 2017 film Edie and in the Star Wars series Ahsoka.
Since 2005 Suilven has belonged to the people of Assynt. The Glencanisp estate, on which it stands, was bought together with the neighbouring Drumrunie estate by the community through the Assynt Foundation, a charity created to look after the land and its natural and cultural heritage. The most used route starts near Glencanisp Lodge above Lochinver and crosses miles of moorland to the Bealach Mòr, the pass in the middle of the ridge, before a steep pull to the grassy summit plateau ringed by cliffs. Other approaches start from Inverkirkaig, past the Kirkaig Falls, and from Elphin in the east; all involve a round trip of about 25 km.
Getting there
Suilven lies about 7 km east of the village of Lochinver on the west coast of Sutherland, and about 25 km north of Ullapool. Inverness is about 90 km away in a straight line. Stornoway Airport on the Isle of Lewis is nearer on the map but across the Minch; the practical airport is Inverness Airport (INV), about 90 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Suilven is a Graham mountain in Scotland. Lying in a remote area in the west of Sutherland, it rises from a wilderness landscape of moorland, bogs and lochans of the region known as Assynt. Suilven forms a steep-sided ridge some two kilometres in length. The highest point, Caisteal Liath, lies at the northwest end of this ridge. There are two other summits: Meall Meadhonach at the central point of the ridge is 723.6 metres (2,374 ft) high, whilst Meall Beag lies at the southeastern end is 659.7 metres (2,164 ft) high.
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