Ben Hope rears up like a wave, with a line of snow like froth along the high ridge, between the coast and Altnaharra in Sutherland. There is a light skim of snow, pockmarked by the sharp cloven hooves of invisible deer. There are miles and miles of empty wild landscape. And tumbling, dancing, down the steep side of the mountain, are old gnarled birch trees, with younger ones gathering more thickly on the flat land beside Loch Hope; their bark is like the moon – silver, patterned with blackness – and their fuzz of fine naked branches almost maroon coloured. This is the most northerly ancient woodland in Britain.
Because I believe magic – in the sense of old stories, fairytales and legends – emerges from its own natural landscape; because the very north of Scotland, where the hills flatten out and there are so few people, is one of the most magical places; and because winter is the right time for old stories, I have lured my son into a driving weekend through Wester Ross and Sutherland, in search of vast empty places and their magical stories.
The west coast of Scotland is a melding place of two traditions. The Gaelic or Celtic – bound to the shore and to sea travel, with noble heroes and high magic – and the northern European forest stories, with their more casual, domestic magic and their themes of poverty and oppression victorious over royal powers and evil stepmothers. The former are often tragic; the latter always end happily.
Yet it is not that simple (if that is simple). There are more traditions than just these two embedded in this complex landscape. This is Viking country, too. En route to Inverness I diverted to the Rassal Ashwood nature reserve in Wester Ross, because ash dieback means it may not be there next time I am this far north.
I had forgotten, until I was among the twisted, gaunt branches with the shiny black buds they carry right through the winter, that Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology, was an ash. The north and west of Scotland, as well as the Isles, were Norse colonies from the seventh century into the 13th. The Norse settlers integrated well with indigenous tribes, and perhaps the long highland history of berserker warriors and their doomed courage comes from their pessimistic shadowy stories. Rassal predates their coming though; this mysterious little wood is at least 6,000 years old. It was well worth a visit.
The trees of northern Scotland are something of a fairytale themselves. According to the earliest records the great Caledonian Forest once covered the whole of Scotland in an endless and perilous blanket of dense trees. Here, Celtic legend has it, Merlin roamed in his madness, his sanity broken by the deceptions of civilisation; and in the sixth century, the Irish saint Columba dealt with an ancestor of the Loch Ness Monster.
As with all the woods of all the old tales, this forest was full of witches, brigands, wolves, lost children, heroes in training and the sidhe – the Gaelic fairy folk. This great ancestral forest was destroyed by … pick your villain, from Viking boatbuilders to English Victorian capitalists. And now there are just a few precious magical remnants.
Sadly, perhaps, contemporary dendrologists now say that this forest never existed – that much of the Highlands was too high, too cold, too wet, too peaty or too rocky for trees to flourish and that forest never covered even 10% of the Highlands.
Nonetheless it was for the most northerly fragments of that forest that we were hunting in the sometimes spooky landscapes of the extreme north-west of Britain. So we headed up the A835 after a wonderful night in the village of Contin. There is also a spectacular shattered coastline here, with a complex geology. The visitor centre at Knockan Crag, which interprets the North West Highlands Geopark is closed in winter (those with a serious interest in geology should do their research in advance). But instead of science you get the weird wonderful light of the northern days. It was very cold – there was snow on the high hills and sharp frosts at night – but the Gaelic Otherworld is known to be closer to us at dusk and dawn; so the winter – when it is dawn or dusk almost all day – creates the right atmosphere.
For a more tangible experience of the ancient powers, we stopped south of Ullapool at Corrieshalloch Gorge – a giant's knife-cut in the earth. At 60m deep and less than 10m wide at the lip, it is technically a "slot gorge", created by glacial melt water. Unusually in these parts it is easily accessible: not only is it barely 100m from two A roads, but Sir John Fowler (later architect of the Forth Bridge) built a little suspension bridge so that he – and now we – could view the 45m-high Falls of Measach. More recently a vertiginous viewing platform has been cantilevered into the side of the gorge, and you can look straight into the depths. A smoky drift of spray looked like some water monster's breath.
And then we headed north again, past the ruined tower of Ardvrek on its rocky peninsula on Loch Assynt, whose owner sold his daughter to the devil in exchange for help building his castle. In despair she threw herself into the loch and was transformed into a mermaid, or – in some versions – a selkie, an older more mysterious figure, a seal who assumes seductive human form to lure mortals away from the harsh world of the croft. (Selkies, unusually, can be of either sex – but love affairs with them seldom end well.) Selkies become strangely believable by the sea lochs and granite sub-islands along this coast.
North of Unapool we encountered our only major disappointment of the weekend. Despite having a fancy tourist brochure, the oak woods of Loch A'Mhuilinn are not honestly approachable. An abandoned road skirts the woods, and you can see the rounded shapes of old oaks at a distance, but you cannot get in among them; we left the path and tried to hack in, but it was extraordinarily rough going and in the end we gave up. The path was pretty enough and there were hazel catkins yellow on the trees but … I wanted the "most northerly ancient oak wood" and I could not have it.
In the late afternoon we arrived in Kinlochbervie, a brave little village out in the northern wilderness. Its secondary school has 64 pupils. The village is also home to the area's main fish market, a fine spread of modern industrial buildings on the harbour: the contrast, after all the miles of emptiness, is surprisingly pleasing.
In all the best old stories, the principal characters set out on long journeys to find their fortunes – and often in the evenings they come down a narrow road and find shelter in an inn, a castle or a palace. We stayed in one of each over our three nights: at Coul House, a country house hotel in Contin; at Tulloch Castle; and now at the Kinlochbervie, a proper travellers' inn – warm and welcoming and relaxed. It had been a long day.
The next morning was shimmery gold mist and loveliness – with a very hard frost and sparkling snow on the hill. We drove still further north to Durness and the Smoo Cave – another traditional haunt of the Devil, but also of fighting clans, smugglers and the ghosts of drowned excise men. We drove along the beautiful desolate north coast, where you look out beyond the rocky bays towards nothing except the Arctic. And eventually left the A836 for a single-track road – and there, beside the loch, under the mountain was the last forest in Britain.
It seems gratuitous that this should be a birch wood. Birches are perhaps my favourite trees – they look so delicate and are so tough. They are a pioneer species – they chased the retreating ice northwards after the last great glaciation and are our oldest species. Moreover they are one of the very few natural features (together with salmon) which have rich symbolic meaning in both northern European and Celtic fairy stories. They are the tree of Venus and of the Sidhe – symbols of hope, fertility and rebirth. Witches' broomsticks were made of birch, but their power to drive out the devil is the origin of "birching" – using birch rods to punish schoolchildren. The original highland "water of life" – before whisky – was made from birch, and so were drums, as well as furniture, fires and fences. There was something deeply pleasing, in the bright cold north, about all these connections coming together.
It was a magical weekend. There are disadvantages to going this far north in midwinter – we were lucky with the weather, but days are short and tourist attractions closed (we could not go to Handa Island or Cape Wrath, for example). However these are outweighed by the advantages: the emptiness and hush were extraordinary – we hardly saw another car until we came down again to Lairg. This means everyone is truly delighted to have you – the warm hospitality and helpfulness more than made up for the cold air.
And it was all weirdly, strangely, very beautiful – a little fairy story adventure.
Where to stay
The trip was supported by Visit Scotland (visitscotland.org). Accommodation was provided by Coul House Hotel, Contin (01997 421487, coulhousehotel.com, doubles from £165); Kinlochbervie Hotel (01971 521275, kinlochberviehotel.com, from £85); and Tulloch Castle, Dingwall (0843 178 7143, bespokehotels.com/tullochcastlehotel, from £65)
• Sara Maitland's latest book is Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales (Granta, £20). To buy a copy for £13.99 go to guardianbookshop.co.uk
