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 Scott Monument Clear in Edinburgh, and the sun sets at 16:10.Watch Scotland live→
StarsGalloway Forest ParkA clear, dark night is forecast over Galloway Forest Park.
SnowWatch Scotland liveSnow is forecast on the summit of Ben Wyvis today.
Just openedShetlandLerwick Town Hall is open again.
On todayOrkneyTomorrow, Stromness Glimmers: A Festival of Light is on.
WildlifeCaithnessAn orca was seen in Wick on Saturday.
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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.
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 8 timesOtter
Seen 7 timesPink-footed goose
Seen 5 timesDipper
Seen 5 timesRed squirrel
Seen 3 times · East LothianGannet
Seen 3 times · DumfriesRed kite
Seen 3 times · RenfrewshireBarnacle goose
Seen 3 timesCommon seal
Seen 3 times · PittenweemGrey seal
Seen 3 times · AppinPine marten
Seen twice · Isle Of North UistWhite-tailed eagle
Seen twice · Argyll and Bute CouncilWhooper swan
Seen twice · HighlandBadger
Seen twice · EdinburghRed grouse
Seen oncePtarmigan
Seen once · Argyll and Bute CouncilGolden eagle
Seen once · HighlandOrca
Seen once · Argyll and ButeMinke whale
Seen once · Loch Fleet, GolspieAtlantic salmon
Seen onceMountain hare
Seen onceRed deer
Seen 8 timesOtterSeen 7 timesPink-footed gooseSeen 5 timesDipperSeen 5 timesRed squirrelSeen 3 times · East LothianGannetSeen 3 times · DumfriesRed kiteSeen 3 times · RenfrewshireBarnacle gooseSeen 3 timesCommon sealSeen 3 times · PittenweemGrey sealSeen 3 times · AppinPine martenSeen twice · Isle Of North UistWhite-tailed eagleSeen twice · Argyll and Bute CouncilWhooper swanSeen twice · HighlandBadgerSeen twice · EdinburghRed grouseSeen oncePtarmiganSeen once · Argyll and Bute CouncilGolden 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: 8 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 ScotlandCastle Stalker, on Loch Linnhe in Argyll, was lost by the Stewarts of Appin to their rivals the Campbells in 1620, over a drunken wager.Christmas Market at Drumlanrig CastleThe 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 Never Ending Skein, a goose artwork made by people across Dumfries and Galloway, is spending the winter at WWT Caerlaverock.A clear, dark night is forecast over Galloway Forest Park.Snow is forecast on the summit of Ben Wyvis today.Hugo Macdonald and James Stevens opened Bard, their shop of Scottish craft, on two floors of Scotland's oldest customs building in Leith, Edinburgh.Christmas in the Historic House at AbbotsfordThe 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 this weekend.On this weekend.On this weekend.On this weekend.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.Scotland's national poet is known as the Makar, from the old Scots word for 'maker', used mostly for a maker of verses.Wojtek, a bear who was enlisted in the Polish army in the Second World War, spent the rest of his life at Edinburgh Zoo.The Net Store and Rhuroin: Two Houses by the Sea in ApplecrossJ.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.In 1911 Henry Alexander took something to the summit of Ben Nevis, above Fort William, and brought it back down again. What was it?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'.Barnacle geese were seen in Glasgow.Ewan McKinnon leads the Arran Mountain Rescue Team, whose volunteers look after Goatfell, the island's so-called honeypot hill.The Marshall family of Marshall's Farm Shop at Kintore have won the Royal Northern Agricultural Society's Good Farming Practice Award.Ebenezer Place, in Wick in Caithness, is the shortest street in the world, at just 2.05 metres long with a single door.Every Christmas Day and New Year's Day, hundreds of men in Kirkwall, on Orkney, push a ball through the town's streets in the Ba' game.Stonechat Bothy: Ten Years on a Wildlife CroftThe tennis player Andy Murray and his wife Kim bought Cromlix, the hotel near Dunblane, in 2013 after Andy learned it was facing closure.The first lasting colour photograph, made in 1861, was a picture of a tartan ribbon, and its method came from the Edinburgh-born physicist James Clerk Maxwell.The whisky bar at Dornoch Castle in Sutherland has been named Whisky Bar of the Year at the 2026 Scottish Licensed Trade News Awards.The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm, in Orkney, was made from two Nissen huts by Italian prisoners of war in 1943 and 1944.The Caledonian Canal was cut across the Great Glen to give ships, the Royal Navy's among them, a safe way across Scotland.What was the score when Arbroath beat Bon Accord in a Scottish Cup football match in 1885?Donna Stiven came to visit a friend in Glenelg, in Lochalsh, in 1973, and stayed on to make candles in a village where wearing jeans made her a hippie.Every 18.6 years the moon skims low over the hills behind the Callanish Stones, on the Isle of Lewis, and some believe the circle was built to watch it.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.Our latest collections.The only herd of reindeer in the British Isles roams free in the Cairngorm mountains, and it began with seven reindeer brought from Sweden in 1952.In 1788, at Siccar Point on the Berwickshire coast of the Scottish Borders, the geologist James Hutton saw that the Earth was far older than people then believed.Leanne Townsend, who teaches foraging, found her calling as a young woman in rural Aberdeenshire, when she came across yellow chanterelle mushrooms in the mossy birch woods.The One O'Clock Gun at Edinburgh Castle began in 1861 so that ships at Leith could set their clocks when fog hid the time signal on Calton Hill.Which of these means a striped cat in the Scottish Highlands is not a true wildcat?Sam Matthews named his Dufftown coffee and bookshop Beinn, because that is what locals on Speyside call Ben Rinnes, the whisky mountain above the town.James Bond's father came from Glencoe, in the Highlands, a detail Ian Fleming added after Sean Connery played 007.Every issue we have printed.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.Wanlockhead, in the Lowther Hills of Dumfries and Galloway, is Scotland's highest village, and it has Scotland's highest pub as well.The Ceilidh Place in Ullapool is on the shortlist for Venue of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards.Graeme Johncock, who travels Scotland for Hidden Scotland, found the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, flatter than Harris but no less dramatic.The Lewis Chessmen, found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831, include rooks carved as wild-eyed warriors biting their shields.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.Legend says a ghostly drummer haunts Cortachy Castle in Angus, and his drum can still be heard echoing from its high walls with no drummer to be seen.The Fortingall Yew, in a Perthshire churchyard, is thought to be 2,000 to 3,000 years old, and may be the oldest tree in Britain.From a lookout high on Linlithgow Palace, Margaret Tudor is said to have watched for her husband, James IV, to come home from Flodden.Gannets were seen in Edinburgh.Bill Gault became the last of Scotland's lighthouse keepers in 1998, when he turned off the light at Fair Isle South Lighthouse in Shetland.Cullen skink, the creamy haddock and potato soup, takes its name from the little town of Cullen, on the Moray Firth.Loch Glass, under Ben Wyvis, is where the river that cut the Black Rock Gorge begins.True or false: John o' Groats is the most northerly point of mainland Britain.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.Loch Doon Castle, in Ayrshire, was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt on the mainland in 1935.Roast Potato and Herb GnocchiFrom 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.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.David Fraser, a Scottish lighthouse keeper, once owned up to making toast on his night watch, only to find the real offence was taking the rations.Half of One, Isle of Skye.Robert the Bruce pulled down Stirling Castle's own defences, so that nobody could hold it against him again.Tom Lewis, whose family owns Monachyle Mhor, the pink farmhouse hotel in Balquhidder, has a mantra: they don't own a table their guests can't dance on.Subscribe to Hidden Scotland.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.A red squirrel was seen in Oban.Crovie, in Aberdeenshire, was built by families cleared from the land for sheep.This is Carrbridge in autumn.Aberdeenshire's Most HauntedThomas Payne, a signwriter in Longniddry, East Lothian, wants to hand-paint every sign in his village, even for free when a business cannot afford him.Scotland's war memorial stands on the site of a church that was used to store munitions and then pulled down.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.Before the River Clyde was deepened in the 1700s, ships could not reach Glasgow. Where was their cargo unloaded instead?Chris Dyer, an archaeologist from Hertfordshire, came to Shetland for a job in 2006 and now opens his smallholding on the island of Bressay to visitors.The Tower on Portobello BeachThe story goes that a Norwegian princess strung a chain across this strait and charged every ship that passed.Kelso Abbey, in the Scottish Borders, was once the region's grandest and wealthiest abbey, and is now the most ruined of its four great abbeys.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Stories from Scotland.Australia's Royal Military College at Duntroon, in Canberra, takes its name from Duntrune Castle on Loch Crinan in Argyll.True or false: some Atlantic salmon survive spawning and come back to spawn again.William Hamer cooks almost every course of his five or six-course dinners over an open fire on the Ardkinglas Estate, beside Loch Fyne in Argyll.A dipper was seen in Aberdeen.Thomas the RhymerPlaces to Stay in Argyll for TwoA free exhibition of historic fakes and forgeries has opened at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.Susie Walker Munro grows tea on her family's farm in Angus, reasoning that if tea could be grown in Cornwall, it could be grown in Angus too.In winter the golf course at Askernish on South Uist is shared with the crofters' sheep and cattle.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.Distilleries in Aberdeenshire.True or false: the village of Beauly, near Inverness, got its name when Mary, Queen of Scots, called it 'un beau lieu', a beautiful place.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.A large decorated pot about 5,000 years old is being pieced together from sherds found at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney.A barn owl flies almost without a sound, because a row of tiny hooks on the front edge of its wing deadens the rush of the air.The two stone mermaids on the shore at Raasay House were meant for its front door.Give a magazine subscription.Parts of Aberdour Castle in Fife, among them its kitchen, stables and gallery, were used as filming locations for Outlander.The New Shetlander, the magazine of Shetland prose and poetry first printed in 1947, is back after three years away.Pink-footed geese were seen near Strathmore, Blairgowrie.Jonny and Daisy Ames, husband-and-wife falconers on the Rothiemurchus estate near Aviemore, let visitors fly their birds, including one of the largest eagles in the world.Sam Heughan, the star of Outlander, grew up in rural Galloway, where most of his family's friends were musicians and craftspeople.Issue 13 is out now.From Glenmore in the Cairngorms, the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd's hill trip ends with a short session of feeding the reindeer by hand.For ten days in 2004, the Black Rock Gorge at Evanton was a set for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.In 1902 John Dewar & Sons, the Perth firm whose family built Aberfeldy distillery, trademarked the name of a way to drink whisky. Which?Isle of Barra gin has won Best Overall Gin at this year's World Spirits Competition in New York.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Restaurants and cafés in Lochaber.Tessa Knott bought 103 acres of moorland in Galloway unseen, and over four decades she turned it into Glenwhan Gardens, looking out over Luce Bay.One of Arran's French kitchens started out in a pale blue vintage Peugeot van called Pierre.Discover Borradill with owner and interior designer Claire MookerjeeAt The House in the Hill near Jedburgh, a family of foxes has raised its cubs on the land around the house.V&A Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show is on today.Donald Dinnie carried two boulders weighing 332kg together across the width of the bridge at Potarch, on Royal Deeside, in 1860.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.Some good places to go, newly added to the site.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.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Things to do and walks in Aberdeenshire.Glen Dye, an estate in Aberdeenshire, is one of many in Scotland giving old estate workers' homes a new life as holiday cottages.DùnSome good places to stay, newly added to the site.Misty Isle Boat Trips has sailed from Elgol on the Isle of Skye to Loch Coruisk since 1969, and one of its early customers was the film director Alfred Hitchcock.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.Broughty Castle, at the mouth of the Tay in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, stayed vital to the defence of the nation right up to the end of the Second World War.