Holiday Scotland

  The mountains of the Highlands may still be snow-covered, and it doesn’t entirely feel that spring has sprung; but with lambs in the fields and leaves returning to the trees, the colours of Scotland are changing again as the seasonal clogs turn once more through their eternal motion. Through the winter the only green [...]

Once upon a time (as all good stories begin) a small island of the wet and windswept northwest coast of Europe ruled the world; well, maybe not the whole world, but a fair chunk of it: and on that island a grimy city pumped the lifeblood of that empire: when Britannia ‘ruled the waves’ it [...]

  On the 6th of April 1320 the nobility of Scotland gathered in the Abbey of Arbroath on the windswept east coast, and penned a letter to the Pope in Avignon that would come to symbolise Scottish independence, its indefatigability and the liberties and freedoms of her people. The Declaration of Arbroath came against the [...]

  The jewel in the starry crown of Argyll is the picturesque town of Oban, sitting on the dark blue waters of the Firth of Lorn overlooking the Islands of Mull, Kerrera and Lismore. The name derives from the Gaelic language: An t-Òban, which means the Little Bay; (correctly: An t-Òban Latharnach the ‘Little Bay [...]

  By the middle of the 19th century Glasgow had become one of the largest industrial cities in Europe and its population had swollen to nearly 500,000; but beyond the sandstone palaces of the Merchant City it was a filth ridden slum. In places like the Gorbals people were often forced to sleep 14 to [...]

  The Tweed has to be one of the most beautiful rivers in Scotland, weaving through the rolling hills of the Border Country as it makes its inevitable way to the North Sea at Berwick. It is a landscape famed for its fishing, textiles, rugby and a colourful history of Border Reivers and monastic settlement. [...]

  In late 1263 the Norwegian king, Haakon Haakonarsson, and his storm-damaged fleet limped into the sheltered waters of the Orkney Islands: the old man was ailing, and with him the dreams of a Viking empire. Earlier in the year Haakon had left Norway and crossed the ocean to stamp his authority over the Hebridean [...]