Scottish Highlands

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Glenfinnan, Scottish Highlands
Glenfinnan, Scottish Highlands (c) Robin McKelvie

A wild and rugged landscape of craggy mountains, where mist shrouded peaks split the heavens and the lower slopes plunge towards windswept beaches and silvery lochs, it is easy to see what inspired the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Lord Byron to wax lyrical about the Scottish Highlands.

Epic Landscape

Enjoying this epic landscape from the comfort of a train rattling along the West Highland Line, or savouring a drive along the Road to the Isles, it is hard not to agree that the Highlands boast some of the most impressive scenery in the world. The allure of the Scottish Highlands – which officially extend along the Highland Boundary Fault from the Isle of Arran in the west to Stonehaven in the east and stretch up to mainland Britain’s most northerly point, Dunnet Head – also stems from the region’s colourful traditions and tragic past.

Even today misty-eyed Highlanders talk about ‘the ’45’, when a Highland army rallied by Bonnie Prince Charlie pushed as far south as Derby. Outnumbered, the Highlanders were later routed at the bloody battle of Culloden the next year.