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Did you know22 hours ago

Gretna Green hosted fewer than 100 weddings a year in the mid-1970s, and a record 5,555 in 2004.

The runaway marriages ended in 1940, and for a while the village in Dumfries and Galloway was quiet. Then the weddings came back, this time by choice rather than escape: by 2000 there were more than 5,000 a year, and in 2004 there were 5,555, a record, according to the National Records of Scotland. Couples still come from all over the world to say their vows over the anvil, and for those who want something simpler, there is a 15-minute handfasting with a tartan ribbon.

A couple at the marriage anvil during a handfasting at Gretna Green.See Gretna Green · Dumfries and Galloway
Today22 hours agoAberdeenshireCrathes CastleAttractionFifeSt Andrews CastleAttractionInvernessCawdor CastleAttractionEdinburghEdinburgh CastleAttractionIsle of SkyeDunvegan CastleAttractionAberdeenshireDrum CastleAttraction

Today calls for a castle.

13° and cloudy across Scotland. Dry enough for the ramparts and the walk round the walls.

See them all
Did you know21 hours ago

The first Edinburgh Military Tattoo, in 1950, had just eight items and an audience of 6,000 on simple benches round the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle.

It grew out of Something About a Soldier, the first public military tattoo in Edinburgh, the year before. Today more than 220,000 people see the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo live on the Esplanade every August, and a further 100 million watch it on television. The Lone Piper, a silhouette high on the top of the castle, marks the close. In the early days the piper stood on a small platform beside a sheer drop, and now wears a harness.

See Edinburgh Castle
From Issue 10 of Hidden Scotland magazineIssue 1021 hours ago

Craft and Soul

Hugo Macdonald and James Stevens on Bard, their shop and gallery on the shore at Leith, where Scottish craft and design are chosen for the stories behind them.

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Just opened21 hours ago

Atera, a bathhouse and spa under Oswald Street in Glasgow, by Central Station, opened on 22 October.

Its 12-metre vitality pool, kept at 37 degrees, is the largest of its kind in Scotland, Atera says. Round it are saunas, a steam room, a hammam, cold plunge pools, seven treatment rooms, a gym and a café, open every day to over-16s.

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In Issue 13The magazine

The Unsung Corner

Sam Heughan grew up in the grounds of a ruined castle above Loch Ken. Three decades on he's back, building a net-zero distillery in the Galloway hills. He talks to Rosie Morton about coming home.

Read it in Issue 13
Quiz20 hours ago

In 1902 John Dewar & Sons, the Perth firm whose family built Aberfeldy distillery, trademarked the name of a way to drink whisky. Which?

From the magazine20 hours agoThe printed copy of Issue 02Issue 02Spring / Summer 2021

The real Madame Doubtfire was Annabella Coutts, an Edinburgh clothes seller who lived in a basement with 30 cats.

The words 'Madame Doubtfire' were scrawled across her shopfront, and the name inspired Anne Fine's best-selling 1987 novel, later filmed as Mrs Doubtfire with Robin Williams. In the 1970s the photographer Douglas Corrance set out to capture her formidable expression, and at just the right moment one of her cats jumped up to sit beside her. As he worked, a local constable was trying, with great diplomacy, to persuade her to tidy the shop. 'I've known him since he was a bairn,' she told Corrance later, using the Scots word for a child. The space is now a much smarter art gallery.

Read the full story in Issue 02
Autumn19 hours ago

What Stirling Castle looks like in autumn.

The great royal castle on its crag above Stirling, where Mary, Queen of Scots was crowned, with the Great Hall and the Royal Palace.

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Did you know19 hours ago

The first lord of Lochranza built a trapdoor above his own back door so that anyone who got in could be attacked from overhead.

It is called a murder hole, and it sat directly above the ground-floor entrance, the tradesmen's way in, at the storage end of the building. Through it defenders could drop stones or shoot down at whoever had forced the door. That was the last of the precautions, not the first. The lord's own door was high in the east wall and reached by a ladder, and the single stair rising through the building had three barriers set along it. The man who built it was probably Dougall MacSween, Lord of Knapdale.

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From our collectionsA collection18 hours agoEdinburghGreyfriars KirkEdinburghCockburn StreetEdinburghScottish National GalleryEdinburghChessel’s CourtEdinburghThe New TownEdinburghThe Arthur's Seat CoffinsEdinburghHolyrood Park and Arthur’s SeatEdinburghMorocco LandEdinburghWitches WellEdinburghCalton Hill

Things to Do in Edinburgh on a Shoestring

Some of the very best things in Edinburgh cost nothing at all, from the national galleries to the hills to the streets themselves. These are the things to do when you'd rather spend the money on lunch.

See the whole collection
Did you know18 hours ago

The earliest Gretna Green wedding on record, in 1771, ended a chase across the Solway Firth in which the bride's father's boat capsized.

John Edgar and Jean Scott, both from Cumberland, fled across the Solway by boat to reach Scotland, where a couple could marry by declaration without a parent's consent. Jean's father followed in a second boat, but a storm overturned it and one of his party drowned. The couple landed safely, and the next day Joseph Paisley married them at Gretna Green, the first village over the border in Dumfries and Galloway. A newspaper of the time called it the first Gretna marriage on record.

A guide tells the story of the anvil in the Famous Blacksmiths Shop museum.See Gretna Green · Dumfries and Galloway
In the Cairngorms18 hours ago

Four pairs of golden eagle twins were fitted with satellite tags in the Cairngorms this summer.

The Cairngorms Raptor Project tagged them on nests that include land of RSPB Scotland, Crown Estate Scotland and the East Cairngorms Moorland Partnership, to learn where young eagles go and what helps them do well. Of last year's tagged chicks, one flew more than 100km from where it fledged, and another stayed within 30km.

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