UKH

I've found a couple of slightly different candidates for this and I know it's been discussed before on here.

This piece suggests a point on Ruadh Stac Mor: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/feb/19/hiking-scotland-wilderness-h...

An earlier tweet from OS suggests a point about 2km north of the above: https://twitter.com/OrdnanceSurvey/status/1133372498777640960

Does anyone know a definitive answer or know why it seems to have changed?

Cheers.

Pairc. Must be up there.

Sorry, I meant to specify the mainland.

Looking for somewhere to spend Christmas?

It will be handy knowledge for the next royal wedding/coronation etc.

Good call - I can see the SM post now - "even in the remotest part of Scotland, the happy couple is toasted!" - bet it could even get into the Daily Heil!

I've only skirted around the margins of Fisherfield but it's run through with a network of good 4wd and stalking tracks that allow for easy access. If you count these then 'most remote' might be elsewhere (Caithness?). The most remote I've personally felt in the UK was camping up in the headwaters of the Tarf.

I suspect it's based on distance from roads or habitation rather than time/ease of access.

The good 4wd tracks only go so far into Fisherfield, the tracks that run through it are much smaller and rougher. However, I'm sure you're right that some god forsaken spot in the flow country would take longer to get to!

Assuming the definition you want is the furthest point from any road, then it depends on what counts as a road. The OS tweet seems to suggest that it is counting the track to the Fionn Loch at Bad Bog as a road (should say "9.1km WNW to the nearest road"). But in any case it looks wrong: the point should be equidistant from (at least) 3 roads, or on the coast. The Guardian point looks closer to the truth, if not quite correct, if you include the Bad Bog track as a road.  

If you only count publically accessible roads, then you might include Cape Wrath during the winter when the ferry isn't running. 

A 25m phone mast should give the game away..

Does anyone remember possibly around 10 yrs ago “the remotest point” was calculated as being between Carn an Fhidhleir and An Sgarsoch? In the valley between by the headwater of the Geldie Burn. I remember it particularly that I must have more or less crossed that remotest point when I walked between those two Munros. I also remember being surprised it was not in the NW of Scotland.

Can’t remember how it was then described, though vague recollection it was something like the nearest public road. Certainly not, now or even then, that remote from estate tracks.

It was published in national newspapers at the time, but my googling has failed to find anything.

That would make sense - it would be around 15.5km equidistant from public roads in Glen Feshie, at Linn of Dee and up the hill behind Blair Atholl. Can't get further than about 11 or 12km in Fisherfield. 

Found what I had remembered written down back in 2014.

Ordnance Survey has confirmed that the furthest point from a road in the whole of Great Britain is located between the peaks of Carn an Fhidleir and An Sgarsoch in the southern Cairngorms (grid ref: NN 91612 83287), with the closest road 15.72km away, near Blair Atholl.

Have to leave it to the OS of what they mean by road then and now I guess.

Caithness has Altnabreac station (+ others) which connects into some very solid shooting tracks. Windfarm tracks too and various roads. Nearly all of Scotland is a very weird mixture these days.

The borrobol forest felt pretty remote but it's not so far from Kildonan. Amazingly wide view from Creag nam Fiadh.

Not a part of the Highlands I'm familiar with - I suspect not many others are either. I had to look them up on Geograph to locate where Borrobol is. I think the closest I've been is Ben Klibreck.

I think the concept of 'remoteness', for me anyway, is more of a feeling than a numerical quantification. When we were locked down, I'd go for a walk in the fields after work and that felt quite remote, away from roads. I think not seeing built structures helps so even in England it's possible to feel remote in somewhere like the North Pennines.

I  agree with Mark in that it depends on your definition of road.  Public or Private?

The measurements given are, I think straight line measurements.

If you are measuring  the amount of walking (around a loch for example or large river), you might have to do to get to a road, then I'm sure there must be further points of remoteness.

 

I absolutely agree with this. I remember crossing over Death Valley in late October from Las Vegas to Mt Whitney via Highway 190, roughly a 3 hour journey, didn't see a soul the whole time. On the western slopes I got out of the car for a last look. It was dusk.

I left the engine running.

I suspect the answer can be found in Nature.scot's remoteness map, but I don't have the necessary GIS software on my PC.

https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/23ab47d7-def3-4f22-9d74-52385b2567ec/scotla...

I see that this dates to 2014, which fits in with Climbing Pieman's note, and that it defines 'remoteness' as travel time from nearest road rather than straight-line distance.

Rob F

I know its not the most remote spot by any metric (especially if you have permission to drive up Glen Shira or Glen Fyne) but the area around the head of Glen Fyne and Loch Shira felt spectacularly remote when I walked from Tyndrum to Cairndow (via Bens Lui, Chleibh and Bhuidhe) in Spring 1988. Well... except for the pylons. That was a day that has lived vividly in my memory, not least for the final hitchhike of the day courtesy of a (decidedly) drunk driver. 
I returned to the same area in summer 2022 and camped by the north  end of Loch Shira (which was a lot harder to get to using a bicycle than Culra (Ben Alder) would have been). The approach to the Munro summit on Ben Bhuidhe was completely and utterly trackless.  
I walked from Allt Scheichachan Bothy over Carn a Chlamhain to the Tarf Hotel in November 93 ( ish) and saw no-one and nothing all day and then over An Sgarsoch and Carn Fhidhleir the next day. I also had the Fisherfield 6 all to myself in December in the early 2000s: it probably wouldn't have been ideal to break an ankle that day. Another place that feels remote is the bealach between Ben Bheoil and Ben Alder.

These were all solo trips which contributes a lot to the sensation of remoteness. When I was first on Ben Alder and Ben Bheoil, in December, in my 20s, there was not a hint of menace in the hills : thirty years later the same mountains felt much more forbidding on a cold, cloudy summer morning. 

I know it’s no where near the remotest but the area around NM 87705 88661 has a very lonely feel about it.

It was a lot busier in 1746 when Bonnie Prince Charlie was bagging a few Munros round that way

A lot of that Kildonan country is an easy bike ride from a railway station - even Ben Armine.  Have to admit that the country south of Loch Coire has a very far ben feeling about it - also the largely trackless Strath Skinsdale. I like Strath Skinsdale!

From personal experience of many of these places (someone has to feed Geograph) - South of the Geldie takes a bit of beating although the furthest I have ever felt from civilised beings and conditions was on a heavily verglassed Ruadh Stac Mòr in an ice storm. (went back a few years on for our honeymoon).

Lochs can be like roads - in the right weather, but when you are around somewhere like Kinlochmorar or  the head of Strathmore (Glen Strathfarrar) , you know it's going to be a long way home. 

My most prized out there  walk in bag, other than landing of a boat near the hill was Uisinis, Pairc on Lewis.

Crossed the Fisferfield area about 4 times and can't say I've found the tracks easy. In fact mostly absent. Given the main track crossing from Poolewe to Dundonald, and around Slioch are ok except for river crossings and peat hags in places, but away from that it's pretty hard going. Mullach Coire Mhic summit is quite remote, without evidence of human intrusion upon the landscape.

Another contender for remoteness might be Lurg Mhor when Corbetts & another Munro must be traversed first. It also has the least ticks on the Munro ticklist of UCH. Another possible is Mullach na Dheiragain  and its satellites are rarely trodden.

An Scargoch can be easily reached by bike, well most of it. Besides remoteness should be defined by time and the difficulty of the ground that has to be covered, not distance as the crow flies, which is meaningless in the human context.

The feeling of Remoteness is partly a function of perception, partly travel method at your disposal, and lastly distance from the habitation/shelter available to you at the time.  No where is truely remote; as all those hills listed can be done in a day, and for those based in Scotland can do them any weekend the weather is half reasonable.

So for Mullach na Dheiragain you can cycle easily upto Iron lodge and beyond, or be at the foot of it in under an hour and a half by Sea Kayak along loch Mulurdoch (with the right wind). If staying at Alt Beithe or Strawberry it just becomes a day walk. However twist an ankle and it’s suddenly becomes very remote. Conversely at the other end of the scale, the Sheiks wives were doing some of these Munros by helicopter uplift and walking down, if they got tired they just got the helicopter to pick them up, clearly for them the perception would have been different from you or I.

I’ve done all these Fisherfield, Mullardoch Round, Monar hills, Cairngorm outliers, Knoydart, Ben Armine ect all in winter (some several times) and often alone I’ve never really thought of them as truely remote as familiarity has changed my perception. Others new to the ground would have an entirely different perception. Whether the perception is false we could discuss at length.

But you have the Tarf hotel, as mentioned further down, and it's been reasonably well done up. 

Part of the worry about being in that area was trying to stay on my bike going down hill on the estate track going out, and noting how much my conventional rubber brakes had worn down in just the space of a couple of days.

The whole area between Beinn Bheac, Carn an Fhidhleir and An Sgarsoch is fairly remote, but good for wildlife: Yet the most obvious thing was that it took a reasonable while to get across the whole line up of hills.

I've three Deleted Munro Tops left to do. The one on Mullach na Dheiragain being by far the most awkward to get. Got a plan to camp up Glen Elchaig and use the network of paths to reach the foot of Creag a' Choire Aird East Top from the north.

Remoteness is also a  feeling.

Canoeing in Northern Canada.    Think a two hour flight north from somewhere like Edmonton, to a small remote town, like Fort Smith, then another  two hour flight north to the 'Barren Lands', with canoes to a river thats been canoed by fewer people than have been into space.  So remote that if you went north you'd not cross a road, railway or track and you'd end up at the north pole.  If you traveled east you'd end up in Hudson Bay.  But without a canoe you'd starve to death because you couldn't get there on foot there are countless thousands of lakes & big rivers, mostly without names..  Likewise you'd never make it back to F.Smith on foot as that is now 200 - 300 miles away with even more rivers and lakes in the way.  

Its a strange feeling.  You could drop Scotland into the area and it would disappear. 
http://davidwperry.blogspot.com/2007/12/canoeing-thelon-in-canada-june-2007...

I remember being shown a 1:250,000 map sheet of somewhere in the Barren Lands. There was not one named feature on it.  Probably half the area of Wales.  (Edinburgh University Library once had a full set of Canadian topo maps.)

In a less remote spot again Canada, I have memories of standing on a summit with the road nearly three days away and seeing no manmade objects other than the trig point plate at my feet (and my boots I suppose). A mere roadside crag.

Edinburgh city centre on a Saturday night