Walking Through Empty Glens: Finding the Villages the Clearances Left Behind
Photo by Photo by Nunzio Guerrera on Unsplash on Unsplash
There's a moment that catches most first-time visitors off guard. You're driving through a glen so beautiful it almost hurts — green slopes, a silver river, heather climbing the hillsides — and then you spot them: a scatter of low stone walls, no roof in sight, sheep grazing where a kitchen once was.
The Highlands are full of these ghosts. Not castles or battlefields, but ordinary homes, emptied during the Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries when tenant farmers were evicted to make way for sheep. Visiting these sites isn't grim tourism. Done right, it's the most grounding thing you can do on a Highland trip — and the walks between them are genuinely lovely.
Boreraig: The Walk That Stays With You
Boreraig, on the Strathaird peninsula in southern Skye, was cleared in the 1850s so the land could be given over to sheep. Today the walk in is arguably the finest way to experience it: roughly 7km each way along an old estate track from the car park at Kirkibost, with views across to the Black Cuillin the whole way.
The village itself sits above the sea — ruined houses, a collapsed mill, and a memorial cairn raised in 1971 by descendants of those evicted. Sit a while. The silence does the talking.
Badbea: A Village on the Edge
Further south, on the Caithness coast near Helmsdale, Badbea tells a harder story still. Those cleared from the inland straths were re-settled here on a cliffside strip too poor to sustain them, and many eventually emigrated. The memorial monument — a short, steep walk from the car park off the A9 — looks out over the North Sea, which families here faced while working the land with one hand and holding their children back from the cliffs with the other, so the story goes.
Pair it with the excellent Timespan museum in Helmsdale for context. It's a ten-minute detour off the NC500 route, and worth every minute.
More Sites Worth the Detour
- Laidhay, Caithness — a preserved croft house showing how pre-Clearance families lived.
- The ruins above Glenelg, Lochalsh — scattered townships beneath the broch of Dun Telve, pairing ancient and modern abandonment in one walk.
- Ceann Hulavig and the township trails on Lewis — the Outer Hebrides carry their own cleared history, often walked in complete solitude.
- Strathnaver, Sutherland — follow the single-track road up the strath and read the interpretation boards marking each emptied township.
How to Visit Respectfully
These aren't official attractions. They're crofts, some still grazed, some with family connections alive today. Close gates, leave everything as you found it, and keep to obvious paths. If you meet locals, a friendly word goes a long way — many people in these communities can tell you which stones belonged to whom.
And don't rush. The point isn't to tick off ruins; it's to stand still long enough to imagine the smoke that once rose from them. Bring a flask, pick a decent day, and let the glen do the rest.
