I’m slightly remorseful after messing with the photo, so here’s another picture of Glen (really Loch) Torridon – and it isn’t raining. (A long -winded way of saying, please go on a nice day.) Try and see this glen when the clouds part to reveal the tops. Soaring sandstone crags, stacked one above the other in tiers. All that wild outdoorsy thing will make you think of that lovely hotel bed you will snuggle into later, perhaps.

The famous song ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me’ actually has an answer: it is ‘because you’re probably in Glen Torridon’.Īnyway, Sou’wester Ross, as we used to call it, is serious and austere. That particular effect is probably not called ‘make the top of mountains unnaturally blue’ but the authentic part is the out-of-focus raindrops on the lens, right hand side. Yes, in the wee picture here of the mountain called Liathach, I expect you’ve spotted that I’d been messing about with those tempting special effects you get in fancy picture-editing apps. Wait, wait…actually, quite a lot of the time it does. We think it’s the one place – other than Smailholm Tower – where you really get that rolling, blue-hill, endless view that is the essence of the Scottish Borders.Īnd, anyway, it’s also a reminder that scenic Scotland doesn’t always have to mean the Highlands. What is this mock-ramparted castle-thing doing on this list, the learned amongst you will ask? Well, we don’t care.

Here are a few more locations where you can be creative with the views. But you certainly do from many points to the north and west.Īnd these reveal its craggy north face, as in the pic above, taken near Turlundy in evening light. Staying in the area, you don’t get a view of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, from within Fort William, the bustling little town in its shadow. There are fine views towards the Great Glen. It’s still in use today and it’s worth stopping off at its highest point, the Suidhe Viewpoint before rolling on past Loch Tarff and down to Fort Augustus. The B862 running down the east side of Loch Ness is an old military road, built to ‘pacify’ the Highlands during the threat of the Jacobite uprisings.

Beautiful scenery pictures