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Issue 13, the walk to the cabin

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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 ScotlandSmoo Cave Damp in Sutherland, and the sun sets at 16:42.Watch Scotland live
  1. The Caledonian SleeperCaledonian SleeperThe Caledonian Sleeper, the overnight train from London, was due into Aberdeen at 7.50am.
  2. The moonWatch Scotland liveThe moon is full tonight.
  3. Just openedCaithnessCastletown Mill in Caithness, built in 1818, is a whisky distillery now.
  4. On todaySutherlandAutumn Highland Festival is on in Dornoch today.
  5. NewsSutherlandLinks House in Dornoch is starting night-time wildlife safaris with thermal cameras.

The Daily

Arrives at 5am every day.

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.

The Daily for 27 October, from Scotland with love. An aerial view shows a sandy cove between rocky headlands, a white house standing on the autumn-toned hillside above the turquoise sea.
Hidden Scotland

The places worth the journey, and the help to get there.

Twice a year, in printMagazine What to see, do and eatPlaces Cottages, bothies and hotelsAccommodation Ready-made daysDays out Region by regionDestinations From £30 a yearJoin
Did you know

On the island of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, scheduled passenger planes land on a beach, and the flight times move with the tide.

Barra Airport's three runways are marked out on the sand of Tràigh Mhòr, the beach known in English as the Cockle Strand, with wooden poles at each end. At high tide all three are under the sea, so the times of the flights to Glasgow change with the tide. Because the runways point three different ways, the little Twin Otter planes can almost always land into the wind. The first official service touched down on the sands in August 1936, and Barra is still the only scheduled beach runway in the world.

See Barra Airport · Outer Hebrides
99 views
In Shetland Islands

Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have taken Gone Fishing to Shetland, fishing for trout on Tingwall Loch and pollock off the rocks near Minn Beach in Burra.

The pair made Scalloway their base, in a cottage looking over the harbour. The episode, Shetland trout and pollock, is on BBC iPlayer.

Read about it
NewNew yesterday

An Afternoon with Bamford

Cromlix holds an afternoon with Bamford in its Glasshouse on Thursday 26 November, a talk on nature and on carrying some calm into the festive season.

Find out more about An Afternoon with Bamford
From the magazineThe printed copy of Issue 09Issue 09Autumn / Winter 2024-25

The Glasgow design studio Timorous Beasties took its name from Robert Burns's poem 'To a Mouse', because its founders did not yet know what they were going to make.

Paul Simmons and Alistair McAuley met studying printed textiles at Glasgow School of Art and set up their studio in 1990. A name borrowed from Burns suited them better than Simmons McAuley Fabrics and Wallpaper. Interiors in the early nineties were all grey and beige, and their stranger, darker patterns, full of insects and the so-called uglier side of nature, helped them stand out. Since then their designs have gone onto bank notes for the Royal Bank of Scotland, bottles for Johnnie Walker and a tiny chocolate box for Fortnum & Mason. 'We take on most things and just view it as a challenge,' says Alistair.

See Timorous Beasties · Glasgow
In Outer Hebrides

The Wall Street Journal has called Askernish Golf Course on South Uist a pilgrimage for golf lovers.

Its writer played ten courses across the Inner and Outer Hebrides in eight days, and found the links at Askernish, first laid out by Old Tom Morris, the best kept of them all.

See Askernish Golf Course · Outer Hebrides
Hidden Scotland, the magazineThe magazine

Issue 13

The autumn and winter issue is here.

Get Issue 13
Did you know

Skara Brae, a stone village on the Bay of Skaill in Orkney, was a thriving community before Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids were built.

People lived in the village from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC. That is earlier than the Great Pyramid, built around 2560 BC, and earlier than the main building at Stonehenge, begun around 3000 BC. Once its people had gone, the village was lost from sight until a storm uncovered it in 1850. The houses still have their stone dressers and box-beds, and Historic Environment Scotland calls it the best-preserved Neolithic, or New Stone Age, settlement in Western Europe. Today you can walk among ten of its buildings and four of its passageways, five thousand years after they were built.

See Skara Brae · Orkney
61 views
TodayFor today's weatherStirlingshireStirling CastleAttractionDumfries and GallowayThreave CastleAttractionDumfries and GallowayDrumlanrig CastleAttractionMorayshireBrodie CastleAttractionEdinburghBlackness CastleAttractionIsle of MullDuart CastleAttraction

Today calls for a castle.

8° and cloudy across Scotland. Dry enough for the ramparts and the walk round the walls.

See them all
New at Glendoick

Glendoick Garden Centre, between Perth and Dundee, has opened its Christmas display, built this year around the poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Each part of the display follows a verse of the poem, and it is bigger than before, with a new outdoor section and animated village scenes. Santa's grotto opens later in the season.

Read about it
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.

WildlifeThis weekSeen 12 timesRed deerSeen 11 times · Hogganfield LochWhooper swanSeen 8 timesCommon sealSeen 7 timesGolden eagleSeen 5 times · Argyll and ButeDipperSeen 5 timesRed squirrelSeen 4 times · East LothianPink-footed gooseSeen 3 times · FifeOtterSeen twiceGannetSeen once · Dunain CottageRed kiteSeen onceWhite-tailed eagleSeen once · Dumfries and GallowayBarnacle gooseSeen once · Main Street, HighlandGrey seal

The wildlife people spotted in Scotland this week.

Red deer are Britain's largest land mammal, and in autumn the stags roar through the rut, and this week they were the animal reported most often in Scotland: 12 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 Scotland
In Stirling

A new Channel 4 series, Our Scottish Hotel, follows Kim and Andy Murray as they renovate Cromlix, their country house hotel near Dunblane.

It was filmed over nearly a year, and its three hour-long episodes follow the couple and their team as a new wing with two restaurants is built. The dates it goes out have still to be announced.

See Cromlix · Stirlingshire
Did you know

Loch Ness, in the Highlands near Inverness, holds more water than all the lakes of England and Wales put together.

Loch Ness isn't the biggest loch in Scotland by area: that is Loch Lomond, at 71 square kilometres. What Loch Ness has is depth. It runs for about 37 kilometres and reaches around 230 metres at its deepest, so it holds 7,452 million cubic metres of water, more than any other loch in Scotland. The water is murky too, because of the peat in the soil around it. And for all that depth, it is not the deepest loch in the country: that is Loch Morar, further west, at 310 metres.

See Loch Ness · Inverness-shire