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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 ScotlandCalgary Bay, Mull Cloudy in Argyll and Bute, and the sun sets at 16:31.Watch Scotland live
  1. Due this weekWatch Scotland liveThe starlings are gathering at dusk again, thousands at a time, in the swirling flocks called murmurations.
  2. Golden hourStrathy BeachThe sun sets at Strathy Beach at 4.15pm this evening, and the sky is forecast to be clear.
  3. Just openedShetlandLerwick Town Hall is open again.
  4. NewsOrkneyThe Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall is due to open its new mountain bike trails at the end of October or the start of November.
  5. Just openedCaithnessCastletown Mill in Caithness, built in 1818, is a whisky distillery now.

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The Daily for 6 November, from Scotland with love. An avenue of tall beech trees frames a leaf-strewn path in autumn light.
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
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New at Bonnie & Wild

Bonnie & Wild, the Scottish food hall in Edinburgh's St James Quarter, has a new tartan and wildflower design over its entrance by the Black Isle fashion designer Siobhan Mackenzie.

The artwork mixes a traditional tartan with grasses and flowers, a nod to the two halves of the hall's name, and it is there to stay. Its Christmas display was switched on the same night.

Read about it
NewNew yesterday

Macbeth's Bothy

A shepherd's bothy for two at the top of Collace village in Perthshire, below Dunsinane Hill, with a copper bath in its own bath house and a fire pit in the field.

Find out more about Macbeth's Bothy
From the magazineThe printed copy of Issue 07Issue 07Autumn / Winter 2023-24

Thomas Payne, a signwriter from Longniddry in East Lothian, gilds shop windows with 23-and-a-half-carat gold leaf, laid onto the glass with water.

Thomas taught himself the traditional craft of glass gilding a few years ago, practising on pieces of glass he bought in charity shops. The sheets of gold go onto the inside of the window, and the water gives them a lustrous mirror finish. It is an old shopfront skill: 'The Victorians used gold leaf to add decorative elements to shop fascias because it’s UV stable and it will never fade'. Trading as Thomas Paints, he works across Edinburgh and the Lothians, and he spends most Fridays on house numbers, which he says are often the finishing touch to someone's home renovations.

Read the full story in Issue 07
In Orkney

Sanday Craft Hub in Orkney has made a Calendar Girls-style charity calendar for 2027, with island crafters posing with their work around Sanday.

The pictures take in the island's beaches, lighthouse and farms. It marks the hub's tenth year and raises money for Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance.

Read about it
Hidden Scotland, the magazineThe magazine

Issue 13

The autumn and winter issue is here.

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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 weatherDumfries and GallowayBotanical WalkActivityScotlandStalking and Guided WalksActivityArgyll and ButeWest Highland Way with Thistle TrekkingWalkIsle of SkyeSkye Trail with Thistle TrekkingWalkIsle of ArranArran Coastal Way with Thistle TrekkingWalkFort WilliamThe Great Glen Way by Thistle TrekkingWalk

Today calls for a walk.

9° and cloudy across Scotland. Dry enough for the boots.

See them all
In Shetland Islands

Fair Isle's new ferry, the Good Shepherd V, has been seen for the first time, at the boatyard in Whitby where it is being built.

It will take over from the Good Shepherd IV, which has carried passengers and supplies between Fair Isle and the Shetland mainland since 1986. Fitting out and sea trials come next.

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.

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WildlifeThis weekSeen 8 times · Carnwath, LanarkPink-footed gooseSeen 8 timesRed deerSeen 7 timesWhooper swanSeen 3 timesWhite-tailed eagleSeen 3 times · Inglis Green RoadDipperSeen 3 times · ElginRed squirrelSeen twice · Dumfries and GallowayBarnacle gooseSeen twicePine martenSeen twiceAdderSeen once · InvernessPtarmiganSeen onceGannetSeen onceCommon sealSeen onceOtterSeen once · HighlandBadger

The wildlife people spotted in Scotland this week.

Pink-footed geese come to Scotland in their tens of thousands each autumn, flying in long skeins between the fields and their roosts, and this week they were the animal reported most often in Scotland: 8 sightings, the latest near Carnwath, Lanark. 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 Cairngorms

Portraits of 42 artists and makers who live in the Cairngorms National Park have been laid out on the Cairngorm plateau for Inside Out, the global art project.

Inside Out was started by the French artist JR, and has brought together more than 700,000 people in 154 countries. The group picture puts the Cairngorms Creative Collective on its world map.

Read about it
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
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