The Best Coastal Places to Stay in Scotland

Scotland's coastline runs to something like eleven thousand miles once you count the islands, though nobody quite agrees on the figure, since coastlines have a way of getting longer the closer you measure them. What's not in dispute: nowhere in the country sits much more than fifty miles from salt water. The sea is the constant here. It feeds the towns, shapes the weather and provides the view from a good number of the places below.

The coast changes character as you travel round it. The west is sea lochs and skerries, otters working the shoreline and sunsets that go on longer than seems reasonable. The east is firths, fishing villages and sharp morning light. The north is cliffs, empty sands and the occasional green shimmer overhead on a clear night. The islands are all of it at once.

The places below share one requirement: the sea has to be part of daily life there, not a rumour beyond the hills. Some sit close enough that spray reaches the windows in a blow. Others watch it from a clifftop or across a garden. There are old fishermen's buildings reborn as houses, a schoolhouse on a bay, estate cottages at the water's edge, and one lodge with its own dock.

A word of honest advice: bring layers whatever the month, and don't study the forecast too closely. Coastal weather here changes its mind hourly, and some of the best hours happen either side of the worst ones. The sea is doing something worth watching in every season. Book somewhere with a window seat.