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 Clyde, Glasgow Clear in Glasgow, and the sun sets at 16:17.Watch Scotland live→
StarsLoch TullaA clear, dark night is forecast over Loch Tulla.
SnowWatch Scotland liveSnow is forecast on the summit of Ben Macdui, Britain's second highest mountain, today.
On todayShetlandSpitfire Girls is on in Lerwick later today.
NewsOrkneyThe Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall is due to open its new mountain bike trails at the end of October or the start of November.
WildlifeCaithnessAn orca was seen in Wick on Saturday.
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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 7 times · Argyll and ButeOtter
Seen 6 times · StrathmorePink-footed goose
Seen 5 timesDipper
Seen 5 timesRed squirrel
Seen 4 times · East LothianGannet
Seen 4 times · RenfrewshireBarnacle goose
Seen 4 timesCommon seal
Seen 3 times · DumfriesRed kite
Seen 3 times · AppinPine marten
Seen twice · Argyll and Bute CouncilWhooper swan
Seen twice · StornowayGrey seal
Seen twice · HighlandBadger
Seen twice · EdinburghRed grouse
Seen oncePtarmigan
Seen once · Argyll and Bute CouncilGolden eagle
Seen once · Highland CouncilWhite-tailed eagle
Seen once · HighlandOrca
Seen once · Argyll and ButeMinke whale
Seen once · Loch Fleet, GolspieAtlantic salmon
Seen onceMountain hare
Seen onceRed deer
Seen 7 times · Argyll and ButeOtterSeen 6 times · StrathmorePink-footed gooseSeen 5 timesDipperSeen 5 timesRed squirrelSeen 4 times · East LothianGannetSeen 4 times · RenfrewshireBarnacle gooseSeen 4 timesCommon sealSeen 3 times · DumfriesRed kiteSeen 3 times · AppinPine martenSeen twice · Argyll and Bute CouncilWhooper swanSeen twice · StornowayGrey sealSeen twice · HighlandBadgerSeen twice · EdinburghRed grouseSeen oncePtarmiganSeen once · Argyll and Bute CouncilGolden eagleSeen once · Highland CouncilWhite-tailed 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: 7 sightings, the latest in Argyll and Bute. 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
Loch Ness, in the Highlands near Inverness, holds more water than all the lakes of England and Wales put together.Perthshire WildlifeThe flight between Westray and Papa Westray, two of the Orkney islands, is the world's shortest scheduled flight, timed at two minutes including taxiing.A clear, dark night is forecast over Loch Tulla.The sun sets at Loch Tulla at 4.17pm this evening, and the sky is forecast to be clear.Graeme Johncock, who travels Scotland for Hidden Scotland, spends a week of every spring helping out on a sheep farm in the Angus Glens.The Scottish Antique & Arts CentreThe 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.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.Have you been to Isle of Mull?Wojtek, a bear who was enlisted in the Polish army in the Second World War, spent the rest of his life at Edinburgh Zoo.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.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.The tune that greets the US president began in a poem set on which Scottish loch?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.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'.How big was the official crowd when Scotland played England at Hampden Park, Glasgow, in 1937?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.Ellis O'Connor, a landscape painter who lives on the Isle of Skye, has taken art residencies in places as wild as the Faroes, Orkney, Svalbard and Shetland.The month Mary Queen of Scots spent in Jedburgh in 1566 was a turning point in her life.The Brough of Birsay, a tidal island off Orkney's West Mainland, can only be reached by a narrow causeway at low tide.The Victorian public toilets in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, are so grand that they have become one of the town's most celebrated sights.A white-tailed eagle was seen near Ullapool.In 1892 Tommy Dewar set off round the world to sell his family's whisky, and threw bottles into the sea along the way.Corrour, on Rannoch Moor in the Highlands, is the highest mainline railway station in the UK, and no public road leads to it.The whisky bar at Dornoch Castle in Sutherland has been named Whisky Bar of the Year at the 2026 Scottish Licensed Trade News Awards.Calum Gillies, an artist who grew up on Raasay, off Skye, runs a tiny gallery with his wife Leonie in the island's old telephone exchange.On his first day as a volunteer at a dig on St Ninian's Isle, in Shetland, a 15-year-old schoolboy found a hoard of Pictish silver.James Seton carved his initials and his wife's above the door of Greenknowe Tower in 1581, and the original iron gate survives.There is a Gaelic blessing carved over the door at Carnasserie, and it names the ancestor of the Campbells.At Baern Café in St Monans, in the East Neuk of Fife, leftover kimchi juice goes into the sourdough and corn from the soup becomes a sweetcorn and tarragon lemonade.The Duke of Atholl's own regiment, the Atholl Highlanders of Blair Castle in Perthshire, has been described as the only legal private army in Europe.Thomas Blake Glover, from Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire, helped found the company that became Mitsubishi and was honoured by the Emperor of Japan.Shelley Richmond, a photographer in Dervaig on the Isle of Mull, feels a physical lightness whenever she drives off the ferry and home onto the island.Before planes landed on Traigh Mhor, the beach at the north end of Barra belonged to the cockle pickers, and they never left.Lindores: The Farm Above the TayOne of Arran's French kitchens started out in a pale blue vintage Peugeot van called Pierre.True or false: marmalade was invented in Dundee, after a Spanish ship carrying Seville oranges sheltered from a storm in the harbour.When Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, died in 1922, every telephone in North America fell silent for a minute in his honour.The air-filled tyre was first patented in 1845 by Robert William Thomson, a 23-year-old from Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, more than 40 years before John Boyd Dunlop's.Woodside Lodge: The Jewel of Loch GoilThe Britannia Panopticon in Glasgow, billed as the world's oldest surviving music hall, is said to be where Stan Laurel first appeared on stage, in 1906.A guest who planned a whole trip around Black h, a holiday house on Skye, turned out to be an old college friend of its owner, Sarah.The oldest Harrier jump jet in existence is being cleaned at the National Museum of Flight for the 60th anniversary of its first flight, on 9 November.Fingal's Cave, on the uninhabited island of Staffa off Mull, inspired Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture after the composer visited in 1829.Burns set the witches' dance in Tam o' Shanter at Alloway Auld Kirk, where his own father lies buried.Giacomo Pesce, the baker at Baern Café in St Monans, in the East Neuk of Fife, came to bread by way of a PhD in mineral physics.Mills Observatory, on Balgay Hill in Dundee, is billed as the only full-time public observatory in Britain, and its dome is made of papier-mâché.Every issue we have printed.Princess Margaret was born at Glamis Castle, in Angus.Graeme Johncock, who travels Scotland for Hidden Scotland, drove out to Ardnamurchan Lighthouse, near the western tip of the Scottish mainland.Spey Bay, where the River Spey meets the Moray Firth near Elgin, has the longest shingle beach in Scotland.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Gannets were seen in Edinburgh.Allan MacRuari, the cunning chief of Clanranald at Castle Tioram on Loch Moidart, in Lochaber, was a thorn in the side of every clan around him.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.Foraged Kelp Miso RamenThe cliffs at Eshaness in Shetland are built from what a volcano threw out 395 million years ago.True or false: the Picts, the people who carved Scotland's Pictish symbol stones, vanished overnight.Cultybraggan, near Comrie, was one of only two maximum-security camps in Britain for German prisoners.Montrose Air Station Museum, in Angus, stands on the site of Britain's first operational military airfield.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.Half of One, Isle of Skye.CillJulia Kirk, the floral artist behind Wild Gorse, helped create the first 'Call of the Wild' retreats at Kinloch Lodge, in a remote corner of Sutherland.The Ceilidh Place in Ullapool is on the shortlist for Venue of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards.The story goes that the grassy mound in the middle of the 17th fairway at Cruden Bay Golf Club is a grave from a battle in 1012.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 concrete pylons along the causeway to Cramond Island were a boom against boats in the Second World War.Robert Andrew, a photographer and mountain path builder, has photographed his crew for ten years on an old Hasselblad film camera with no batteries to fail in the cold.A common seal was seen near Lochmaddy.What does the name of Cape Wrath, the north-west tip of mainland Britain, mean?Why Slow Travel Could be Here to StayThe poet Robert Burns stayed in Cullen, on the Moray Firth, in 1787, and Robert the Bruce's wife is said to be buried at the town's Auld Kirk.This is Rosemarkie in autumn.Subscribe to Hidden Scotland.From Glenmore in the Cairngorms, the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd's hill trip ends with a short session of feeding the reindeer by hand.Guardswell Farm, in the Sidlaw Hills of Perthshire, has no wifi or TVs, because Anna Lamotte, who runs it, finds escaping the screen so restorative.The Old Man of Hoy, the towering sea stack off the island of Hoy in Orkney, has a tall tale attached to its first climb.Places to Stay in ArgyllRowing the Pacific in 2025, the Scottish brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean kept things in perspective with an audiobook about Shackleton's Antarctic mission.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.Loch Affric, in the Highlands, has appeared in which Hollywood film?Jura'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.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.The Black Shed: An Interview with Blair HunterThe Kelpies, at Falkirk, honour the Clydesdale, the working horse that powered Scottish industry.A dipper was seen in Aberdeen.Zanna Wilson, an artist who runs the Watermill Gallery in Aberfeldy, Highland Perthshire, says the town's community Facebook page gives the most reliable northern lights alerts.Monkstadt House, near Uig, was once the seat of the MacDonald chiefs, and Bonnie Prince Charlie came ashore on the shore below it.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Legend says the rare fairy foxgloves on the walls of Dundrennan Abbey, in Dumfries and Galloway, only grow where Roman soldiers once trod.A pint by the fire.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.True or false: John o' Groats is the most northerly point of mainland Britain.Morvern Graham, an artist and storyteller on a cliff top above the North Sea, grew up on folktales told on a rocky shore.The youngest prisoner of war held at Edinburgh Castle was six years old.Issue 13 is out now.Nick Gardner, who climbed all of Scotland's Munros in his 80s, asked to see a mountain as a small boy and was taken to Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.Pink-footed geese were seen near Birnam Place, Dundee.Give a magazine subscription.On the Isle of Muck, west of Mallaig, the photographer Jim Richardson climbed the highest hill three times to get his portrait of the island's laird.Alexander II died in 1249, thirty-five years into his reign. Where is he buried?Some good places to go, newly added to the site.For Mandy Maria, an artist who draws Scotland's mountains in soft pastel, a walk is almost psychedelic, because colour is what she notices most.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.Alan Waldron, who makes bagpipes by hand on Broad Street below Stirling Castle, took his first piping lessons in Gibraltar in 1991.Discover Borradill with owner and interior designer Claire MookerjeeOur 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.Laura Wilson, who runs The Dundonald guesthouse in Culross, Fife, opened The Mercat café and shop in the old village butcher's because her guests kept asking where she found things.Before the River Clyde was deepened in the 1700s, ships could not reach Glasgow. Where was their cargo unloaded instead?Some good places to stay, 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.The real Madame Doubtfire was Annabella Coutts, an Edinburgh clothes seller who lived in a basement with 30 cats.The NuckelaveeHave you been to Isle of Lewis?The Fife Arms, the hotel in Braemar in Aberdeenshire, has an Art Deco cocktail bar with a story behind its name.Guess where this is?