The Roman geographer Ptolemy in his first century AD map called it the ‘clean-cut cape’: Duncansby Head looks like a piece from a giant jigsaw puzzle. The sandstone cliffs drop more than 200 feet into the sea, and the grass grows all the way to...
Sheltered by the slopes of the Twelve Bens, this lakeside castle is a romantic, battlemented Gothic Revival fantasy. It was built as a present for his wife by Mitchell Henry (1826-1911), who was a Manchester tycoon and later Galway MP. The Henrys also purchased a...
Founded in 1169 by the Benedictines, Holy Cross was supposedly endowed with a splinter from the True Cross, hence its name. Now it has been completely restored, and the church has become once again a popular place of worship and pilgrimage. Most of the present...
Fidra is one of a quartet of small volcanic rocks projecting from the Firth of Forth off the Lothian coast; the others are Lamb, Craigleith and Bass Rock. Together they contribute to the sense, when in the Lothians, of being close to country, sea and...
‘It’s a far cry to Loch Awe!’ The exact meaning of the old shout is in dispute, but it was probably a confident boast of the inaccessibility of Campbell territory, which includes this 23-mile-long loch. Loch Awe is studded with ancient timber dwellings, called crannogs, and...
First-time visitors to Edinburgh usually have in mind at least two essential sights: the castle and the palace. Holyrood – comprising the abbey, the park and the palace – begins at the northern slope of Arthur’s Seat. The original palace was begun in about 1500...
Stirling Castle, and the town itself, played an important role in the 13th and 14th century Wars of Independence; near here Bannockburn was fought and, seventeen years earlier, William Wallace routed the Earl of Surrey’s army at Stirling Bridge. The castle, still under military occupation,...
The Yarrow and the Ettrick waters meet just a mile or so south-west of the town of Selkirk, and at their junction stands this rambling Georgian mansion, started by the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch in 1795 and worked on by several hands, including William Atkinson and William Burn. Until...
Built on the last squares of the alluvial plane which spread from the River Forth at Alloa, south of here, to the start of the Ochil Hills, splendidly apparent before us, Alva is a compact hillfoot town in the Devon Valley. Alva Burn feeds the...
All of Iona’s religious buildings were erected during the Reformation. Nearly all of the ancient Celtic crosses were destroyed then too, though a few remain and are on view near St Mary’s Cathedral. It was in the last century, when the island was bought by...