The Scottish Highlands are majestic and legendary. But they are also often simply wet and cold. Why do we do this to ourselves – and what makes them so special?
I’ve written down a few of my travelling thoughts for you:
A few years ago, I went on a two-week motorbike tour through the Highlands. I was on my motorbike for many hours every day and it rained every day. It was the end of September, it was wet, it was cold and it was still beautiful!
My wife and I once travelled to Scotland by car in the autumn. I was still playing golf back then and of course we also visited St Andrews. We also drove through the Cairngorms National Park. We had some lovely days in the east of Scotland, but it was often wet, cold and foggy – but still beautiful!
One December we did another tour by car. Christmas market in Glasgow and then a short tour through the western Highlands. We were accompanied by sleet in the mountains. It was wet, it was cold and it was still … I think you get the concept.
Is it always raining in Scotland? No, because we were really lucky with the weather in Edinburgh – it was sunny or slightly cloudy and quite pleasant. I think that was also in September.
As you can see, we’ve been coming back to Scotland for years and often the weather is such that even the thought of it puts the majority of tourists off in advance.
And that’s a good thing!
There are people who go on holiday in the south and there are us people who love the north.
And we don’t want to share the beautiful landscapes of the north (north-west Europe) with millions of other tourists, do we?
So what is it that makes the Scottish Highlands so appealing?
Surely it’s the legends of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and their battles against the English.
Perhaps it is films like Braveheart, Highlander or series like Outlander that give us an understanding of the unruly and rebellious Scots as freedom-loving, rugged outdoorsmen.
And the peculiar Scottish customs such as kilts, bagpipes and Highland Games certainly reinforce this image too!
Perhaps it is a touch of magic that envelops the Highlands like the mist and the low-hanging clouds. It can be found in the particularly beautiful – magically beautiful – places: secret springs, caves in the rock, gnarled trees and especially in the mystical stone circles and barrows that we encounter time and again.
But perhaps it is simply the breathtaking nature that surrounds us here: High bare mountain ranges that rise majestically above us and on whose brown slopes shaggy Highland cattle and red deer graze, or quiet lochs that wind through the mountains and whose still waters seem infinitely deep, or waterfalls that gurgle their way over the rocks of the mountains.
This harsh nature shaped the animals and people who lived in it and with it: tough, independent and resilient with a strong will: For freedom! But would they have become like this if the Highlands were not the cold, wet, barren and rugged mountains that they are? Is it not precisely in their wildness that their marvellous beauty lies?
And perhaps that is exactly what it is – a deep sense of freedom that surrounds us when we enter this world, spend a moment, a day or a week in it, travelling through the mighty mountain ranges and taking in its grandeur.
Freedom!!!
I wish you a wonderful journey to the wild Highlands of Scotland!
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Cover picture: In the valley of Glencoe (Photo: Ulrich Knüppel-Gertberg)
