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Live from ScotlandEdinburgh Cloudy in Edinburgh, and the sun sets at 16:05.Watch Scotland live→
Shooting starsWatch Scotland liveThe Leonids are at their best on Monday night.
StarsSandayA clear, dark night is forecast over Sanday.
Just openedShetlandLerwick Town Hall is open again.
NewsOrkneyThe Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall is due to open its new mountain bike trails at the end of October or the start of November.
NewsSutherlandLinks House in Dornoch is starting night-time wildlife safaris with thermal cameras.
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From the magazine
Issue 03Winter 2021
See Staffin Dinosaur Museum · Isle of Skye
Issue 03Winter 2021Dugald Ross, who was a builder and crofter on the Isle of Skye, found many of its dinosaur footprints and built a museum for them by hand.
Dugald, known as Dugie, grew up in the tiny Gaelic-speaking crofting hamlet of Ellishadder. At 15 he found a cache of arrow points and Bronze Age objects, and from then on he was hooked on the history of his island. He hunted fossils in his spare time, and many of the footprints and bones of the dinosaurs that walked on Skye some 170 million years ago were his finds. The palaeontologist Steve Brusatte called him the only person he knew who had built his own museum, by hand, from the ruins of a 19th-century one-room schoolhouse. The Staffin Museum, north of Portree on the A855, holds many of his most important finds, and it is worth checking it is open before you go. Dugie died in October 2025.
See Staffin Dinosaur Museum · Isle of Skye
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.
80 views
WildlifeThis week
Seen 5 timesOtter
Seen 4 times · East LothianBarnacle goose
Seen 4 timesRed squirrel
Seen 3 times · DumfriesRed kite
Seen 3 timesPink-footed goose
Seen 3 times · Rosneath RoadDipper
Seen twice · East LothianGannet
Seen twice · Isle Of North UistWhite-tailed eagle
Seen twice · EdinburghRed grouse
Seen onceGolden eagle
Seen once · Argyll and ButeMinke whale
Seen onceCommon seal
Seen once · PittenweemGrey seal
Seen once · AppinPine marten
Seen onceMountain hare
Seen 5 timesOtterSeen 4 times · East LothianBarnacle gooseSeen 4 timesRed squirrelSeen 3 times · DumfriesRed kiteSeen 3 timesPink-footed gooseSeen 3 times · Rosneath RoadDipperSeen twice · East LothianGannetSeen twice · Isle Of North UistWhite-tailed eagleSeen twice · EdinburghRed grouseSeen onceGolden eagleSeen once · Argyll and ButeMinke whaleSeen onceCommon sealSeen once · PittenweemGrey sealSeen once · AppinPine martenSeen onceMountain hareThe 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: 5 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 ScotlandCromars, the St Andrews fish and chip shop, has opened a takeaway in Dundee.Fraser Potter rebuilt The Taybank in Dunkeld, a pub once owned by Dougie MacLean, who wrote the folk tune 'Caledonia', while training to row the Atlantic.Stewart Christie & Co in EdinburghThe 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 Leonids are at their best on Monday night.A clear, dark night is forecast over Sanday.Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway raised £4 million in a little over six months to buy its hills for a nature reserve.Yard97 in GrangeThe 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 today around Scotland.On today around Scotland.On today around Scotland.On today around Scotland.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.This is Carrbridge in autumn.Antoine and Elisa, from Brittany and Burgundy, make sea salt on the Isle of Skye using nothing but the sea, sun and wind.Wojtek, a bear who was enlisted in the Polish army in the Second World War, spent the rest of his life at Edinburgh Zoo.James Seton carved his initials and his wife's above the door of Greenknowe Tower in 1581, and the original iron gate survives.J.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.True or false: a chip shop in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, says it fried the first Mars bar in batter, in 1992.Each August, the Fife fishing town of Pittenweem holds a week-long arts festival, with artists showing their work everywhere from front rooms to garden sheds.A red kite was seen near Dumfries.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'.Ebenezer Place, in Wick in Caithness, is the shortest street in the world, at just 2.05 metres long with a single door.Lochranza, the village at the north end of the Isle of Arran, could only be reached by water until 1843.The Black Shed: An Interview with Blair HunterWhite-tailed eagles, the UK's largest birds of prey, died out in Scotland in 1918 and returned from 1975, starting on the Isle of Rum.The Corryvreckan, between Jura and Scarba, is said to be the third largest whirlpool in the world, and its roar can be heard 16 km away.Elizabeth Tindal, a Dark Sky Ranger in Galloway Forest Park in Dumfries and Galloway, counts a stargazing chat with a 10-year-old boy among the best conversations she has had.Seumas Mackinnon has been sailing visitors from Elgol on Skye to Loch Coruisk since 1969, and three generations of his family now crew the boats.A traffic cone is thought to have sat on the head of the Duke of Wellington's statue in Glasgow since at least the 1980s.The Fife Arms, the hotel in Braemar in Aberdeenshire, has an Art Deco cocktail bar with a story behind its name.The Scullery: A Slow Stay in the Yarrow ValleyScotland has its own rainforest along the west coast, and NatureScot says it is as important as tropical rainforest, but even rarer.From a lookout high on Linlithgow Palace, Margaret Tudor is said to have watched for her husband, James IV, to come home from Flodden.True or false: it has been proved that chicken tikka masala was invented in Glasgow.The strongest gust ever measured at a high-level UK weather station hit the summit of Cairn Gorm, in the Cairngorms, at 173 mph in 1986.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.The Never Ending Skein, a goose artwork made by people across Dumfries and Galloway, is spending the winter at WWT Caerlaverock.At midsummer in Shetland the sun only dips below the horizon, giving about 19 hours of daylight and a soft twilight called the simmer dim.Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, would not join his family's lighthouse business, yet his poem The Light-Keeper looks out from the lamp room itself.There were Picts on the sea stack beside Dunnottar Castle.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.J.K. Rowling finished writing the last Harry Potter book in Room 552 of the Balmoral Hotel, on Princes Street in Edinburgh.Isobel Hutchison, who grew up at Carlowrie Castle near Edinburgh, walked across Iceland after her plan was met with derision, and became known as 'The Quiet Explorer'.Every issue we have printed.Graeme Johncock, who travels Scotland for Hidden Scotland, counts the ruined kirk of St Drostan's, at the end of Glen Esk in Angus, among his favourite quiet places.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.Gannets were seen in Edinburgh.Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean, three brothers from Scotland, rowed across the Pacific for 139 days, and stepping back on land in Australia felt like being reborn.Loch Affric, in the Highlands, has appeared in which Hollywood film?Killiecrankie House, near Pitlochry, has been named Scotland's fine dining restaurant of the year for the second year running.Alloway Auld Kirk, in Ayrshire, was already a ruin when Robert Burns was born nearby.Wild Miso Noodle BrothThe Chapel Royal at Stirling was thrown up in a hurry for one christening.In winter, the storyteller Morvern Graham takes a flask of coffee to the top of a rock above the North Sea at high tide to watch the waves.Wallace and Gromit are coming to V&A Dundee in March 2027, in an Aardman exhibition showing in Scotland for the first time.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.The Malt Room, the first bar in Inverness given over entirely to whisky, was dreamt up in London by an Inverness bar manager and a friend.The Scots word 'coorie' means to cuddle up with a loved one, and the Coorie lodge on Loch Venachar, in the Trossachs, is a modern black box.How do locals say the name of Avoch, the village on the Black Isle?Half of One, Isle of Skye.Lean To Coffee at Breakish is building a year-round bakery in Broadford and plans to open seven days a week.Rory Dowling, who builds guitars by hand near Pittenweem in Fife, was first hooked on wood by a Swiss Army knife he was given at seven.Subscribe to Hidden Scotland.A red squirrel was seen in Oban.The concrete pylons along the causeway to Cramond Island were a boom against boats in the Second World War.True or false: the name Glasgow means 'dear green place'.Graeme Johncock, who travels Scotland for Hidden Scotland, would rather walk the quiet sands of Huisinis than famous Luskentyre, on the Isle of Harris.The gardens of Dunrobin Castle, near Golspie in Sutherland, were laid out in 1850 by Sir Charles Barry, who modelled them on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles.Cairngorm Mountain, above Aviemore, has finished improving the West Wall Poma, its longest ski tow, ahead of the winter season.Tower O'EssJura's rum distillery, in Craighouse, began when Michael Walton, who was born on the island, told his partner Charlotte Gillett he would love to make rum.Fair Isle, between mainland Shetland and Orkney, is the most remote inhabited island in the UK, home to just 44 people in 2022.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.Innerpeffray Library, near Crieff, still has its old Borrowers' Register, and you can still sit down with its rare books.Hoy Heritage Centre in Orkney has gathered the names of around 600 people who have climbed the Old Man of Hoy.Keny Drew, a stained glass maker based in Crail in Fife, trained as a photographer and now puts screen-printed images into his glass.The last islanders left the village on Hirta, St Kilda, far out in the Atlantic. In what year?When the old Burr's Store in Tongue, on Scotland's north coast, was brought back to life, the community was asked what it wanted, and a bakery topped the wish list.Woodside Lodge: The Jewel of Loch GoilThe Old Man of Hoy, the towering sea stack off the island of Hoy in Orkney, has a tall tale attached to its first climb.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.The Ghillie DhuBarnacle geese were seen in North Berwick.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.True or false: the famous twit-twoo is not one tawny owl but two, calling to each other.Architect-Designed Places to Stay on SkyeVerity Hurding, a chef from Glenelg in Lochalsh, and her wife Jenny keep the supper clubs they run as Eòlach to around eight guests.The Brough of Birsay, a tidal island off Orkney's West Mainland, can only be reached by a narrow causeway at low tide.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.Distilleries in Argyll and Bute.From Glenmore in the Cairngorms, the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd's hill trip ends with a short session of feeding the reindeer by hand.Sweetheart Abbey, at New Abbey near Dumfries, is named for a lady who kept her late husband's embalmed heart with her for the rest of her life.The cinnamon buns that sell out first at 101 Bakery, in Edinburgh's Southside, are accidentally vegan, which is what keeps them light and fluffy.True or false: the sticky postage stamp was invented by a bookseller from Dundee.Give a magazine subscription.“Montrose is located within walking distance of Princes Street, Calton Hill, Arthur's seat, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Scottish Parliament and the Royal Mile, the perfect stop either on your way out or on your way back to relax and enjoy.”Some of the wild venison in Great Glen Charcuterie's salami, made near Spean Bridge in the Highlands, is carried off the hills by stalkers with Highland ponies.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.In 1902 John Dewar & Sons, the Perth firm whose family built Aberfeldy distillery, trademarked the name of a way to drink whisky. Which?Clare Coghill, who runs Café Cùil by Carbost on the Isle of Skye, sends her team out foraging every week, and her favourite autumn dish is chanterelles.Doune Castle, near Stirling, was Castle Anthrax in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.Restaurants and cafés in Argyll and Bute.Restaurants and cafés in Argyll and Bute.Restaurants and cafés in Argyll and Bute.Restaurants and cafés in Argyll and Bute.Restaurants and cafés in Argyll and Bute.Restaurants and cafés in Argyll and Bute.More than 3,000 seals have been counted on the sands at the mouth of the Ythan, north of Aberdeen.The man who built Carnasserie Castle also made the first book ever printed in Scots Gaelic.The photographer Soo Burnell says the symmetry of Scotland's old swimming pools, such as Portobello Baths in Edinburgh, calms her busy mind.Discover Borradill with owner and interior designer Claire MookerjeeGlen Dye, an estate in Aberdeenshire, is one of many in Scotland giving old estate workers' homes a new life as holiday cottages.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.A dipper was seen near Rosneath Road, Helensburgh.The very first bottle of whisky from Nc'nean, a distillery on the Morvern peninsula, sold for £41,000 at a charity auction.Some good places to go, newly added to the site.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.Things to do and walks in Argyll and Bute.CamasStewart Christie & Co in Edinburgh's New Town, the oldest bespoke tailor in Scotland, has customer ledgers going back to 1720.Old Tom Morris, four times winner of the Open, was born on North Street in St Andrews in 1821, the son of a weaver.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.