Loch Assynt

Loch Assynt is a freshwater lake in the Scottish Highlands. It is located about 8 km east of Lochinver and about 12 west of Loch Shin in the county of Sutherland.

Loch Assynt has the typical elongated form a lake of glacial origin in the Ice Age. It is about 10 kilometers long and more than 1 km wide. The greatest depth of the lake is 128 meters. Loch Assynt is situated 66 m above sea level, drained by the river Inver which flows near Lochinver in the Atlantic.

On the north shore of the lake is located on a peninsula, the ruins of the former castle of the MacLeods of Assynt - the Ardvreck Castle. Apart from the tiny village of Cruachan, which consists of only a few farmsteads, there are no other towns on the lake shore. Although Loch Assynt is in a very sparsely populated area, the lake is via the A837 and the A894, which meet on the north shore near the ruins to reach by car. Only the south side of the lake is accessible by any road.

Not far from the northern shore the Assyntische unconformity is developed. Here the approximately 3 billion year old Lewisian gneiss store younger sandstones and quartzites from the Torridonium ( about 1 billion years old). In 1912, this region was an excursion destination of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, under the leadership of Benjamin Neeve Peach and John Horne. Participants were inter alia Emil Tietze, Maurice Lugeon, Emile Haug and Elisabeth Jeremine. The members of the expedition stayed in the east from the lake Cruachan Hotel, which thereby became famous in professional circles. The aim was to explore the common Moine Thrust zone.

Loch Assynt is surrounded by the typical treeless landscape of the northern Highlands. Only a few small riverside areas and on some islands in the lake are a few - some dead - trees. This barren environment gives the lake an austere beauty that clearly distinguishes him from the idyllic hole in the south of Scotland.