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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 ScotlandTantallon Castle Cloudy in Lothian, and the sun sets at 16:47.Watch Scotland live
  1. FoghornMull of Galloway LighthouseThe old foghorn at the Mull of Galloway is due to sound today.
  2. The rutWatch Scotland liveIt is first light in the Highlands, and the stags are roaring.
  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. NewsOuter HebridesComunn Eachdraidh Nis, the heritage centre in Ness, has finished a £330,000 refit.
Hidden Scotland

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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
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Just addedAdded today

We've just added Leslie Odom in Jr. in concert to the website.

Leslie Odom, Jr., the Tony-winning Aaron Burr of Hamilton, sings at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Sunday 25 October.

Find out more about Leslie Odom in Jr. in concert
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
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TodayFor today's weatherLochaberKnoydart Ranger ServiceTourEdinburghEdinburgh Gin DistilleryTourDumfries and GallowayGretna Green Guided TourTourPerthshireBlair Athol DistilleryTourFort WilliamBen Nevis DistilleryTourIsle of MullTobermory distilleryTour

Today calls for a guide and a roof.

7° and rain across Scotland. Wet across Scotland: the tours that keep you dry, and the ones that do not care.

See them all
Did you knowShawna LawWritten byShawna LawRead Shawna’s piece

Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park set in meadows and woodland just outside Edinburgh, is explored on foot with a map of its artworks.

‘The entrance door to the trail can be found in the gift shop and once you pass through it, a woodland path lies straight ahead of you. You are soon surrounded by trees and the quiet sounds of the woods, until an installation peeps through the branches and draws you further in. It’s a place best experienced first-hand, but there are over 30 permanent and unique site-specific sculptures to discover.’

Shawna LawWritten byShawna LawRead Shawna’s pieceSee Jupiter Artland · Lothian
Hidden Scotland, the magazineThe magazine

Issue 13

The autumn and winter issue is here.

Get Issue 13
WildlifeThis weekSeen 7 timesDipperSeen 5 times · DriftwoodGolden eagleSeen 4 times · KillinRed deerSeen 3 times · Dumfries and GallowayWhooper swanSeen twice · AngusPine martenSeen twiceOtterSeen once · FortroseGannetSeen once · Dunain CottageRed kiteSeen onceWhite-tailed eagleSeen once · John Muir WayPink-footed gooseSeen once · Dumfries and GallowayBarnacle gooseSeen onceMinke whaleSeen once · Perthshire and KinrossBeaverSeen onceRed squirrelSeen onceMountain hare

The wildlife people spotted in Scotland this week.

The dipper is a small brown river bird with a white bib that walks underwater along the beds of fast rivers, hunting for insects, and this week the dipper was the animal reported most often in Scotland: 7 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
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.

Just addedAdded today

We've just added Royal Mile International Piano Series: The Beethoven Sonatas to the website.

Ariel Lanyi plays Beethoven's Diabelli Variations by candlelight in St Giles' Cathedral on Monday 26 October.

Find out more about Royal Mile International Piano Series: The Beethoven Sonatas
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
FoghornToday

The old foghorn at the Mull of Galloway is due to sound today.

On a few Sundays a year the lighthouse at Scotland's most southerly point starts its old engines and blows the horn, and this is one of them. The exhibition is open from eleven until five. The lighthouse does not print the hour of the blast, the engines are old enough to refuse, and the horn is never blown in fog, so go hoping to hear it and not counting on it.

See Mull of Galloway Lighthouse
From the magazineThe printed copy of Issue 04Issue 04Spring / Summer 2022

Rory Dowling, a guitar maker in Fife's East Neuk, named Taran Guitars after the Gaelic word for thunder and a hill on Harris.

Rory is a luthier, a maker of stringed instruments, and he went from whittling to furniture design before finding his true calling. 'You can sit on a chair, but a guitar has the power to move people,' he says. In the renovated dairy of Comielaw Farm, on the Balcaskie Estate near Crail, he makes between 11 and 13 guitars and five mandolins a year, and musicians from around the world come to commission one. The soundboards are spruce from the Alps, alongside Scottish sycamore, reclaimed mahogany and walnut from a tree blown down on the nearby Balcarres Estate. The hill behind the name, Taran Mhor, rises almost straight out of Loch Resort, and it has always fascinated him.

See Taran Guitars · Fife
7.13amThis morning

It is first light in the Highlands, and the stags are roaring.

For a few weeks each autumn the red deer stags come down off the high ground and bellow at one another across the glens, loudest at dawn and at dusk. Glen Etive, Torridon and Jura are known for it, and it carries a long way, so it is best heard from the road and from a good distance. It is all but over for the year.

Watch Scotland live