Scottish Highlands, UK
Lochs, glens, and single malts. May and September dodge both the midges and the crowds on the NC500.
Best time to visit
Weather by month
Cost
Serves travellers at Backpacker→Ultra-luxury level. Typically around $170 a day on the ground.
Ranges are typical costs, not quotes. Check the real price before you book.
What's on
Edinburgh Fringe August
The world's largest arts festival
Braemar Gathering September
Highland games with the royals
Worth knowing
A car. Buses link the towns and leave out the glens. Much of Skye and the far northwest is single-track with passing places: you pull in, you let people past, and you do not park in them.
getting around · editorial
Inverness for the north and the NC500, Glasgow or Edinburgh for the south and west. Inverness is about three and a half hours from Glasgow by road. The West Highland Line to Fort William and Mallaig is one of the few trains worth taking for its own sake.
getting there · editorial
Fuel stops in the far northwest are far apart, so you fill up when you can rather than when you need to. Scotland''s access rights allow wild camping on foot; they do not cover sleeping in a van in a passing place, and locals will tell you so.
know before · editorial
Cards work almost everywhere, including remote pubs. Scottish banknotes are interchangeable with English ones. Tipping is modest and not automatic.
money · editorial
Midges own the west coast from early summer to early autumn and are worst in still, damp weather. Deep winter gives about four usable hours of daylight and closes the high passes.
when not to go · editorial
Inverness and Fort William as bases with services, Portree on Skye, Ullapool and Durness for the northwest coast, Aviemore for the Cairngorms. Rooms on the NC500 are thin on the ground and go a season ahead.
where to stay · editorial
Quests
Icon
Eilean Donan
A castle on an islet where three lochs meet. Rebuilt in the 1930s.
Glenfinnan Viaduct
Twenty-one concrete arches from 1901. The steam train crosses around midday in summer.
Glen Coe
The most dramatic glen in Scotland, and the saddest: the 1692 massacre happened here.
Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness
A ruin above the deepest loch in Britain. Watch the water, just in case.
Fairy Pools, Skye
Pools of clear, freezing water at the foot of the Cuillin.
Camusdarach Beach
White sand looking out at the Small Isles, and almost always empty.
See
See Glencoe on a day of low cloud
Eat
Try a Speyside whisky at the distillery
Whisky at the distillery that makes it
The same malt tastes different beside the still. It is true, and nobody can explain it.
Cullen skink
Thick soup of smoked haddock, potato and milk. From the north-east, but it is everywhere.
Cold-smoked salmon
Smoked over peat. Thin slices, dark bread, lemon.
Moment
Drive the Bealach na Bà to Applecross
A deer on the road at dawn
It stops and looks. You stop and look. Nobody is in a hurry.
Four seasons in one day
Sun, hail, sun again, and wind throughout. It is not an exaggeration.
Trail
Ben Nevis
1,345 metres, the highest point in Britain. Seven hours, and the top almost always in cloud.