Luxury Vacations in Scotland

Unlike its illustrious single malts, the spirit of Scotland cannot be bottled. It dwells in the rustling heather, in the haunting refrain of bagpipes, in the verses of Robert Burns, recited with pride each January.

For many, Scotland is the Highlands, a wilderness of pine-covered peaks and turreted castles, where salmon leap in the rivers Spey, Dee and Tay, and where the fathomless waters of the lochs ripple with monstrous myths. Edinburgh, the lamplit capital, broods in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. Its forbidding castle houses the Scottish Crown Jewels, sparkling like Hogmanay fireworks. On the banks of the Clyde lies Glasgow, an old bastion of shipbuilding, its streets full of Mackintosh’s Art Nouveau flourishes. And then there are the islands – almost 800 of them – each one a chapter in a Caledonian epic. They come as tiny as the isles of St Kilda, renowned for their seabirds; as drenched in history as neolithic Orkney; as vast as Lewis and Harris, a distant beauty of stone circles and deserted beaches.