Scottish Highlands

North and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which cuts across Scotland in a near-straight line from Arran to Stonehaven, the land changes character abruptly: ancient Precambrian and Cambrian rock lifted in the Caledonian mountain-building, then scoured by Ice Age glaciers into deep glens, long lochs and summits of strikingly similar height. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom and one of the most thinly peopled corners of Europe, emptied over the nineteenth century by the Clearances and emigration. The Great Glen, a fault running from coast to coast, splits it in two — the Grampians to the south-east, the Northwest Highlands beyond — and remnant stands of Scots pine from the old Caledonian Forest give it the only boreal forest in the British Isles.

At the western end of the Grampians, above Fort William, Ben Nevis rises to 1,345 m, the highest point in the British Isles; its north face carries cliffs some 700 m high, and the ruins of a summit observatory staffed from 1883 to 1904 still stand on the stony plateau. A short way south, Glen Coe is a glacier-cut valley about 12.5 km long through volcanic rock, narrowing sharply at its pass; it is regarded as the cradle of Scottish mountaineering, and its name is inseparable from the massacre of 13 February 1692, when government troops killed thirty-eight men of the MacDonalds of Glencoe who had sheltered them. Along the Great Glen itself, Loch Ness stretches for about 37 km and holds more water than all the lakes of England and Wales together.

The far north-west is older still. In Torridon, Liathach (1,055 m) is built of near-horizontal beds of red Torridonian sandstone resting on Lewisian gneiss up to three billion years old, its ridge broken into the pinnacles known as Am Fasarinen. On the coast of Kintail, Eilean Donan castle stands on a tidal island where three sea lochs meet; the thirteenth-century stronghold of the Mackenzies and MacRaes was destroyed by Royal Navy ships in 1719 and rebuilt between 1919 and 1932. Inland, the West Highland Line crosses the Glenfinnan Viaduct, 21 concrete arches completed in 1901 on a curve above the head of Loch Shiel.

Getting there

Inverness, the region's main town, is served by Inverness Airport (INV), about 60 km from the Great Glen near Fort William; Glasgow and Edinburgh airports are the larger gateways to the south. The A82 runs from Glasgow through Glen Coe and Fort William and along Loch Ness to Inverness. By rail, the West Highland Line links Glasgow with Fort William and Mallaig, the Highland Main Line serves Inverness, and the Caledonian Sleeper runs overnight from London Euston to both Fort William and Inverness.