The roads less travelled that take you to places that matter. The adventures that gather you up and sweep you away. The blend of the wild and the artistic that makes Scotland what it is. We'd love for you to join us.
Live from ScotlandThe Scott Monument Clear in Edinburgh, and the sun sets at 16:10.Watch Scotland live→
The Caledonian SleeperCaledonian SleeperThe Caledonian Sleeper, the overnight train from London, was due out of Euston at 11.45pm, bound for Edinburgh and Glasgow.
StarsGalloway Forest ParkA clear, dark night is forecast over Galloway Forest Park.
Just openedShetlandLerwick Town Hall is open again.
On todayOrkneyTomorrow, Stromness Glimmers: A Festival of Light is on.
WildlifeCaithnessAn orca was seen in Wick on Saturday.
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A free morning email to see what’s on this week, catch up on what’s happening in Scotland and find somewhere new to go.
Hidden Scotland
The places worth the journey, and the help to get there.
Did you know
Scotland's national animal is the unicorn, and on the old Scottish royal arms two crowned unicorns hold up the shield, bound in golden chains.
The oldest surviving version of the arms with unicorns is a weather-worn carving above the gateway of Rothesay Castle, on the Isle of Bute, made no later than the reign of Robert III, which ended in 1406. In about 1484 James III went further and issued gold coins called the unicorn and the half-unicorn. The chain is usually read as a sign of royal strength: the unicorn was thought too wild for anyone to tame, and only a Scottish king was strong enough to hold it. You can still spot unicorns across the country, from the top of the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh to the gate of the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
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WildlifeThis week
Seen 8 timesOtter
Seen 7 timesPink-footed goose
Seen 5 timesDipper
Seen 5 timesRed squirrel
Seen 3 times · East LothianGannet
Seen 3 times · DumfriesRed kite
Seen 3 times · RenfrewshireBarnacle goose
Seen 3 timesCommon seal
Seen 3 times · PittenweemGrey seal
Seen 3 times · AppinPine marten
Seen twice · Isle Of North UistWhite-tailed eagle
Seen twice · Argyll and Bute CouncilWhooper swan
Seen twice · HighlandBadger
Seen twice · EdinburghRed grouse
Seen oncePtarmigan
Seen once · Argyll and Bute CouncilGolden eagle
Seen once · HighlandOrca
Seen once · Argyll and ButeMinke whale
Seen once · Loch Fleet, GolspieAtlantic salmon
Seen onceMountain hare
Seen onceRed deer
Seen 8 timesOtterSeen 7 timesPink-footed gooseSeen 5 timesDipperSeen 5 timesRed squirrelSeen 3 times · East LothianGannetSeen 3 times · DumfriesRed kiteSeen 3 times · RenfrewshireBarnacle gooseSeen 3 timesCommon sealSeen 3 times · PittenweemGrey sealSeen 3 times · AppinPine martenSeen twice · Isle Of North UistWhite-tailed eagleSeen twice · Argyll and Bute CouncilWhooper swanSeen twice · HighlandBadgerSeen twice · EdinburghRed grouseSeen oncePtarmiganSeen once · Argyll and Bute CouncilGolden eagleSeen once · HighlandOrcaSeen once · Argyll and ButeMinke whaleSeen once · Loch Fleet, GolspieAtlantic salmonSeen onceMountain hareSeen onceRed deerThe wildlife people spotted in Scotland this week.
Scotland's otters live along the sea coast as well as the rivers, and on the west coast and the islands they are often seen in the kelp at low tide, and this week the otter was the animal reported most often in Scotland: 8 sightings. These are the animals people have reported most in the last seven days, the most seen first. Every sighting is logged with a photograph or a recording on iNaturalist, the wildlife recording site, and each card opens them on its map.
Where to see wildlife in ScotlandChristmas Market at Drumlanrig CastleSam Heughan, the Outlander actor, runs Ride Galloway, a motorbike weekend that takes around 200 riders on nearly 130 miles of Dumfries and Galloway roads.The Never Ending Skein, a goose artwork made by people across Dumfries and Galloway, is spending the winter at WWT Caerlaverock.The flight between Westray and Papa Westray, two of the Orkney islands, is the world's shortest scheduled flight, timed at two minutes including taxiing.The Caledonian Sleeper, the overnight train from London, was due out of Euston at 11.45pm, bound for Edinburgh and Glasgow.A clear, dark night is forecast over Galloway Forest Park.Lara Messer, a Glasgow photographer, found a craft chocolate bar in her bag on a train home and went on to start Bare Bones Chocolate.Christmas in the Historic House at AbbotsfordThe sheep of North Ronaldsay, in Orkney, live almost entirely on seaweed, kept on the shore by a stone wall that runs right round the island.On this weekend.On this weekend.On this weekend.On this weekend.Orkney and Shetland belonged to Norway until 1468 and 1469, when they were pledged to Scotland for a royal wedding dowry that was never paid.Mary Arnold-Forster, an architect in Dunkeld, Perthshire, often goes to see a new building site by bike or kayak, and sometimes camps on it.Wojtek, a bear who was enlisted in the Polish army in the Second World War, spent the rest of his life at Edinburgh Zoo.The Net Store and Rhuroin: Two Houses by the Sea in ApplecrossJ.M. Barrie, from Kirriemuir in Angus, gave Peter Pan to a London children's hospital, and a special law lets it earn from the story for ever.In 1911 Henry Alexander took something to the summit of Ben Nevis, above Fort William, and brought it back down again. What was it?Garry Jamieson, of the family firm Jamieson's of Shetland, went to university to study mechanical engineering before he came home to the spinning mill his father built at Sandness.Barnacle geese were seen in Glasgow.Norsemen who broke into Maeshowe, a 5,000-year-old tomb in Orkney, covered its walls in graffiti, including 'Ingigerth is the most beautiful of women'.Where did Stone Age farmers most likely bring the Orkney vole from?Ebenezer Place, in Wick in Caithness, is the shortest street in the world, at just 2.05 metres long with a single door.The Marshall family of Marshall's Farm Shop at Kintore have won the Royal Northern Agricultural Society's Good Farming Practice Award.The wildlife cameraman Hamza Yassin searched more than a million trees on Glen Tanar Estate, in Aberdeenshire, to find one golden eagle nest for the BBC.The glasshouses of Kinloch Castle, on the Isle of Rum, once briefly housed alligators.The writer Robert Louis Stevenson began Treasure Island during a rainy family holiday in Braemar, on Royal Deeside, in the summer of 1881.The Caledonian Canal was cut across the Great Glen to give ships, the Royal Navy's among them, a safe way across Scotland.The artist Gideon Summerfield spent six months in Braemar, in Aberdeenshire, making portraits of its residents, which now hang in The Flying Stag bar at The Fife Arms.Stonechat Bothy: Ten Years on a Wildlife CroftGraeme Johncock, who travels Scotland for Hidden Scotland, spends a week of every spring helping out on a sheep farm in the Angus Glens.The whisky bar at Dornoch Castle in Sutherland has been named Whisky Bar of the Year at the 2026 Scottish Licensed Trade News Awards.Jarlshof, at Sumburgh in Shetland, holds more than 4,000 years of homes on one headland, from Stone Age farmers to a laird's house of the 1500s.The little ferry between Glenelg and Kylerhea on Skye is the last manually operated turntable ferry in the world.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Sam Matthews named his Dufftown coffee and bookshop Beinn, because that is what locals on Speyside call Ben Rinnes, the whisky mountain above the town.The islanders of St Kilda, in the Outer Hebrides, sent messages to the mainland in little wooden boats, set adrift for the sea to carry.Nick Gardner was over 80 when he set out to climb every Munro, the Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet, and he finished in two years.During the Second World War, the crown of Scotland was buried in a medieval toilet in David's Tower at Edinburgh Castle.Which of these means a striped cat in the Scottish Highlands is not a true wildcat?The overdraft was invented in Edinburgh in 1728, when the Royal Bank of Scotland let a merchant, William Hog, take out more than he had.The Galloway Hoard, found by a metal detectorist in Dumfries and Galloway in 2014, held silk from Constantinople buried more than a thousand years ago.Every issue we have printed.Legend says a ghostly drummer haunts Cortachy Castle in Angus, and his drum can still be heard echoing from its high walls with no drummer to be seen.A bronze war trumpet shaped like a boar's head, around 2,000 years old, was found by farm workers draining a bog at Deskford, in Banffshire, in 1816.The Ceilidh Place in Ullapool is on the shortlist for Venue of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards.From a lookout high on Linlithgow Palace, Margaret Tudor is said to have watched for her husband, James IV, to come home from Flodden.Scotland, region by region.Scotland, region by region.Scotland, region by region.Scotland, region by region.Scotland, region by region.Scotland, region by region.Scotland, region by region.Rowing the Pacific in 2025, the Scottish brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean kept things in perspective with an audiobook about Shackleton's Antarctic mission.Gannets were seen in Edinburgh.Cullen skink, the creamy haddock and potato soup, takes its name from the little town of Cullen, on the Moray Firth.For Jeni Iannetta of Bad Girl Bakery, the first stop for food in Inverness is the Victorian Market's food hall, and not just because her bakery is there.Loch Glass, under Ben Wyvis, is where the river that cut the Black Rock Gorge begins.True or false: John o' Groats is the most northerly point of mainland Britain.Loch Doon Castle, in Ayrshire, was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt on the mainland in 1935.Roast Potato and Herb GnocchiBanjo Beale quit his job in advertising in Australia, arrived on the Isle of Mull as a broke backpacker and became a cheesemaker.From Scotland's past.From Scotland's past.From Scotland's past.From Scotland's past.From Scotland's past.From Scotland's past.From Scotland's past.A former sailor and diver spent years researching the people buried at a ruined church near Oban, then made the signs that tell their stories himself.Kat Hill, a historian turned writer on the Isle of Skye, found the idea for her book 'Bothy' in the visitor book of a bothy beside Loch Etive.Half of One, Isle of Skye.Robert the Bruce pulled down Stirling Castle's own defences, so that nobody could hold it against him again.Tom Lewis, whose family owns Monachyle Mhor, the pink farmhouse hotel in Balquhidder, has a mantra: they don't own a table their guests can't dance on.Subscribe to Hidden Scotland.A red squirrel was seen in Oban.Crovie, in Aberdeenshire, was built by families cleared from the land for sheep.Sam Heughan, the star of Outlander, grew up in rural Galloway, where most of his family's friends were musicians and craftspeople.This is Carrbridge in autumn.Aberdeenshire's Most HauntedScotland's war memorial stands on the site of a church that was used to store munitions and then pulled down.Thomas Payne, a signwriter in Longniddry, East Lothian, wants to hand-paint every sign in his village, even for free when a business cannot afford him.A tale to read.A tale to read.A tale to read.A tale to read.A tale to read.A tale to read.A tale to read.Before the River Clyde was deepened in the 1700s, ships could not reach Glasgow. Where was their cargo unloaded instead?Friends of the lighthouse keeper John Boath and his wife Hazel phoned ahead whenever the couple moved on, so the next cottage down the road could come out and wave too.The Tower on Portobello BeachThe story goes that a Norwegian princess strung a chain across this strait and charged every ship that passed.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Scotland's 26 mountain rescue teams are all volunteers, and between them they answered over 1,200 callouts in 2025.Australia's Royal Military College at Duntroon, in Canberra, takes its name from Duntrune Castle on Loch Crinan in Argyll.True or false: some Atlantic salmon survive spawning and come back to spawn again.A dipper was seen in Aberdeen.Thomas the RhymerKelso Abbey, in the Scottish Borders, was once the region's grandest and wealthiest abbey, and is now the most ruined of its four great abbeys.Places to Stay in Argyll for TwoA free exhibition of historic fakes and forgeries has opened at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.In winter the golf course at Askernish on South Uist is shared with the crofters' sheep and cattle.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Róis, a jeweller in Glasgow, keeps at least 200 jars of sea glass in her studio, gathered from 68 different places around Scotland.True or false: the village of Beauly, near Inverness, got its name when Mary, Queen of Scots, called it 'un beau lieu', a beautiful place.A large decorated pot about 5,000 years old is being pieced together from sherds found at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney.A barn owl flies almost without a sound, because a row of tiny hooks on the front edge of its wing deadens the rush of the air.Morvern Graham, an artist and storyteller, says that moving from the city to a solitary cliff-top house above the North Sea transformed her life and her work.Give a magazine subscription.The two stone mermaids on the shore at Raasay House were meant for its front door.The New Shetlander, the magazine of Shetland prose and poetry first printed in 1947, is back after three years away.Pink-footed geese were seen near Strathmore, Blairgowrie.Gretna Green, the Dumfries and Galloway village where blacksmiths once married runaway couples over the anvil, has a resident blacksmith again for the first time in more than 150 years.House of Gods, a hotel just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh's Old Town, takes the look of its rooms from the Orient Express.Issue 13 is out now.Parts of Aberdour Castle in Fife, among them its kitchen, stables and gallery, were used as filming locations for Outlander.From Glenmore in the Cairngorms, the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd's hill trip ends with a short session of feeding the reindeer by hand.For ten days in 2004, the Black Rock Gorge at Evanton was a set for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.The Old Man of Hoy, the sea stack off the island of Hoy in Orkney, has drawn some remarkable climbers over the years.In 1902 John Dewar & Sons, the Perth firm whose family built Aberfeldy distillery, trademarked the name of a way to drink whisky. Which?Stephanie and her husband Ryan took on a derelict farm on the edge of North Berwick, in East Lothian, and now run a holiday cottage there called The Barn.Isle of Barra gin has won Best Overall Gin at this year's World Spirits Competition in New York.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Discover Borradill with owner and interior designer Claire MookerjeeDes Hacket, Urban Programme Manager at the charity Future Woodlands Scotland, says trees in towns and cities can cut flooding and energy bills and even boost our mental health.At The House in the Hill near Jedburgh, a family of foxes has raised its cubs on the land around the house.V&A Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show is on today.Guess where this is?Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Our latest days out.Tessa Knott bought 103 acres of moorland in Galloway unseen, and over four decades she turned it into Glenwhan Gardens, looking out over Luce Bay.Some good places to go, newly added to the site.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.DùnRobert Workman, a former PE teacher, sells reclaimed furniture and architectural salvage at Yard 97 near Perth, from a row of joined-up 1940s airfield buildings.Some good places to stay, newly added to the site.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Somewhere to stay.Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have shocked her courtiers by playing real tennis at Falkland Palace in Fife wearing trousers rather than a dress.The wildlife film-maker Gordon Buchanan lived for a year and a half between Kingussie and Newtonmore, in the heartland of pine martens, and never saw a single one.Broughty Castle, at the mouth of the Tay in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, stayed vital to the defence of the nation right up to the end of the Second World War.