Attraction in Inverness-shire

Eilean Donan Castle stands on a small tidal island at the junction of three sea lochs in the western Highlands of Scotland, its silhouette of towers and battlements reflected in the dark water below and backed by the mountains of Kintail creating what has become the most photographed castle scene in Scotland and one of the most reproduced images of the country worldwide. The castle was originally built in the thirteenth century, destroyed by government forces in 1719 during a Jacobite rising, and meticulously rebuilt between 1912 and 1932 by Lieutenant Colonel John Macrae-Gilstrap, creating the building that has become through its near-universal presence in Scottish tourism imagery virtually synonymous with the Highlands themselves. The setting at the meeting of Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh is exceptional even by the standards of the western Highland coast. The three lochs converging here create a wide expanse of water in every direction, the mountains rising steeply from the water's edge and the evening light catching the castle walls in ways that explain the compulsion to photograph this scene that has afflicted visitors since photography became widely accessible. The causeway connecting the island to the mainland allows visitors to walk around the building and appreciate the relationship between the architecture and the water from every angle. The castle is associated with the Clan Macrae, who served as hereditary constables to the Mackenzie lords of Kintail, and the Macrae-Gilstrap restoration was both a personal tribute to his clan's history and a practical act of preservation. The interior was rebuilt with careful attention to historical accuracy and houses a collection of clan-related artefacts, Jacobite memorabilia and historical displays. The memorial to Macrae soldiers who died in the First World War gives the restoration a personal and communal dimension beyond architectural preservation. The road through Kintail toward the Five Sisters and over the Ratagan Pass provides some of the finest Highland scenery accessible by car in Scotland.

Handa Island off the northwest Sutherland coast near Scourie is one of the finest seabird colonies in Britain, a small uninhabited island accessible by ferry from Tarbet whose combination of the great sandstone cliffs on its northern and western faces and the extraordinary concentration of breeding seabirds including approximately 200,000 individuals of various species creates one of the most impressive wildlife watching experiences available in Scotland. The Scottish Wildlife Trust manages the island as a wildlife reserve. The great stack of Handa, a detached column of Torridonian sandstone separated from the island's northern cliff by a narrow channel, supports one of the densest concentrations of breeding guillemots in Britain, with approximately 100,000 birds occupying every available ledge in a mass of activity, noise and movement that is one of the most impressive wildlife spectacles in the British Isles. Razorbills, kittiwakes, fulmars, great skuas and puffins also breed on the island in considerable numbers. The walk around the island perimeter, a circuit of approximately six kilometres, provides access to all sections of the cliff colony and includes the most dramatic viewpoints over the stack from the cliff edge above. The combination of the stack scenery, the bird numbers and the completely unspoiled island landscape of heather moorland, lochs and Torridonian sandstone geology creates a wildlife island experience of exceptional quality that rewards the effort of the ferry crossing.

Inverewe Garden near Poolewe in Wester Ross is the most extraordinary horticultural achievement in Scotland, a garden of over 2,500 plant species created by Osgood Mackenzie from 1862 onward on a bare peninsula of Torridonian sandstone on the shores of Loch Ewe, the warming influence of the North Atlantic Drift allowing the cultivation in the open air of plants from the Himalayas, South America, the Southern Ocean islands and New Zealand that could not survive the Scottish climate without the exceptional shelter and warmth provided by this specific location at a latitude comparable to Moscow and Labrador. The National Trust for Scotland manages the garden. Mackenzie's achievement was to shelter the exposed and windswept peninsula from the Atlantic gales using a windbreak of Scots pine and other trees, then to create a series of gardens within the shelter of the windbreak that exploited the warmth of the Gulf Stream current to support an extraordinary collection of plants from the world's temperate and subtropical zones. The planting developed over sixty years by Mackenzie and subsequently expanded by his daughter Lady Mairi Sawyer into the collection of approximately 2,500 species visible today. The garden's position on the shores of Loch Ewe provides a magnificent backdrop of sea and mountain against which the exotic planting creates a visual contrast of remarkable quality. The Himalayan plants growing on the shore of a Scottish sea loch, with the mountains of Wester Ross visible across the water, create an experience of horticultural wonder available nowhere else in Scotland.

Loch Ness in the Great Glen of the Scottish Highlands is the most famous lake in the world, its extraordinary dimensions, the depth and darkness of its waters and the enduring legend of the Loch Ness Monster combining to create a destination that draws visitors from every country on Earth. The loch is 37 kilometres long, over 2 kilometres wide in places and reaches a maximum depth of 227 metres, making it the largest freshwater body in Britain by volume and one of the deepest lakes in Europe. The dark colour of the water, stained by peat washed from the surrounding moorland, reduces visibility to a few metres below the surface and creates conditions that have sustained the monster legend with remarkable persistence. The first modern sighting of a large unknown creature in the loch was reported in 1933 and the story spread rapidly around the world, generating a sustained media interest that has never entirely faded. Hundreds of subsequent sightings, sonar surveys, underwater photography expeditions and scientific investigations have failed either to confirm or conclusively disprove the existence of a large unknown animal in the loch, and the mystery has proved remarkably durable given the resources applied to resolving it. Environmental DNA studies of the loch conducted in 2018 found no evidence for a large reptile but did suggest the presence of large quantities of eel DNA, which has not resolved the debate to anyone's full satisfaction. The Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition at Drumnadrochit provides a thorough and reasonably sceptical examination of the legend and the scientific evidence, and the ruins of Urquhart Castle on a promontory above the loch provide one of the finest viewpoints over the water and one of the most historically significant medieval fortifications in the Highlands. The Great Glen Way long-distance walking route follows the loch shore for much of its length, providing excellent access to the loch landscape.

Smoo Cave near Durness at the very northwest corner of Scotland is the largest sea cave on the British mainland, a three-chambered cave system cut into the Durness limestone by the combined action of the sea from the ocean entrance and the Allt Smoo stream from the inland entrance, whose combination of the dramatic arched entrance from the sea, the waterfall falling from the ceiling of the inner chamber and the underground boat trips through the furthest accessible sections provides one of the most unusual and most dramatic natural heritage visits in the Scottish Highlands. The outer chamber of the cave is entered through an enormous natural arch in the limestone cliff face, the largest cave entrance in Britain, whose scale is immediately impressive and whose cool, echoing interior contrasts dramatically with the Atlantic weather outside. The middle chamber is separated from the outer cave by a short passage and contains the waterfall of the Allt Smoo descending approximately twenty metres from a hole in the ceiling, the stream having carved its own entrance to the cave system from above independently of the sea entrance. The cave has been used by humans since prehistoric times, the floor deposits containing evidence of occupation over many thousands of years, and Norse settlers in the Viking period used it as a shelter and a midden site whose deposits have provided evidence of their diet and material culture. The Norse name Smoo derives from a word meaning cleft or hole in the rock, reflecting a tradition of naming this feature that goes back to the earliest Scandinavian settlement of this area. The dramatic limestone coastal scenery around Durness, including the Kyle of Durness and the remote beach of Balnakeil Bay, provides excellent walking and an exceptional landscape of northwest Scottish coast character.