The most beautiful places in Scotland (by someone who lives there)

Growing up in Scotland, incredible beauty was so close at hand that I almost took it for granted. It was only when I hit my teens and twenties and started travelling that I began to truly understand why so many tourists – around three million a year – flock to my homeland from all over the world and are endlessly enraptured. It’s pretty uncommon, it turns out, to find a country where you can wake up in an ancient capital city, walk rugged coastline and admire historic engineering wonders, plunge into a misty Highland glen or climb a snow-flecked mountain all in the space of about 24 hours. Capped with a whisky, of course.

Scotland’s finest attractions both natural and manmade are not only abundant and extraordinary but amazingly accessible. At less than 31,000 square miles, Scotland is smaller than most American states and you can drive coast to coast in less than a day. And yet it packs in so much, from sweeping lochs and peatlands to sleepy fishing villages, cities steeped in culture, mountains stacked on mountains and castles enough to give you castle fatigue. Finding beauty in Scotland isn’t a case of where to look, so much as where to start. Here’s my pick of the most beautiful places in Scotland. 

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Malcolm Jack is a writer from Scotland. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. This guide includes affiliate links, which have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.