Bealach na Bà, on the Applecross peninsula: Travelling the steepest road in Britain
Bealach na Bà is as unforgettable and beautiful as it is nerve wracking.


An extraordinary, winding mountain pass, built in 1822, Bealach na Bà makes for a nail-bitingly beautiful drive, offering views from its 2,054ft summit over to the Isles of Skye, Rum, Raasay, Rona, Harris and Lewis.
The single-track, historic drovers’ lane travels up, down and around hairpins through the mountains of the remote Applecross peninsula as if they were the Alps and, at Bealach na Bà (‘pass of the cattle’), features the steepest ascent of any road in the UK.
See more of Secret Britain
Falls of Glomach, Ross and Cromarty: Britain's most isolated, and perhaps most spectacular waterfall
Annunciata Elwes's Secret Britain series looks at Falls of Glomach, one of the highest waterfalls in the UK.
The life of a 21st century Highland clan chief, from managing 60,000 acres to manning the tills at the gift shop
Their family histories are full of heads on spikes and villages being razed to the ground, but modern Highland clan
Faringdon Folly, Oxfordshire: A Gothic tower built in the 1930s by 'the last great eccentric'
Atop Folly Hill, Faringdon Folly is just the latest landmark at a spot with an astonishing mix of history.
150 years of the Shipping Forecast: The magic and poetry of Dogger, Fisher and German Bight
Sign up for the Country Life Newsletter
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.
-
Name that hat! Country Life Quiz of the Day
Tuesday's quiz has a wartime property for sale, plus popes, linoleum and more.
By Toby Keel Published
-
Everything you need to know about the stealth red carpet tease and Breitling’s new Top Time B31 watch — as seen on Austin Butler’s wrist
In the space of a month, Breitling has signed Austin Butler as a brand ambassador, launched a new collection and snapped up a dormant brand.
By Chris Hall Published
-
Birds of Cors Dyfi, Montgomeryshire: The remote sanctuary for over 100 types of birds
Annunciata Elwes looks at this remote spot beloved of some of Britain's rarest species of birds.
By Annunciata Elwes Published
-
Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons: The Cotswolds countryside where butterflies roam and stones cure smallpox
Some of the prettiest open spaces in the Cotswolds make the grade in Annunciata Elwes' series on Secret Britain.
By Annunciata Elwes Published