Your Touring Options In Scotland
Edinburgh To Lochearnhead
Routes 1 and 1A on the map . . .
Lochearnhead To Stirling
Route 2 on the map . . .
Lochearnhead To Glasgow
Via Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park
Route 3 on the map . . .
A more direct way via the Strathyre Region
Routes 2 and 4 on the map . . .
Edinburgh to Glasgow
Directly by the fastest way
Route 5 on the map . . .
Via Stirling
Route 7 on the map . . .
Via Stirling and Loch Lomond
Routes 1 and 6 on the map . . .
Glasgow to Ayr
Route 8 on the map . . .
Ayr To Keswick
Route 9 on the map . . .
Glasgow to Keswick
Route 10 on the map . . .
Scotland has always had a tempestuous history. The clans fought among themselves when they weren’t fighting the Sassenachs from the South.
From the Border Reivers harrying the Roman legions to the Scottish National Party of today demanding a return to independence, the Scots have a history of resistance and outright rebellion.
Indeed, the Highlanders and Lowlanders were mostly at war with each other throughout their early history with only brief periods of unity against common foes. For the Lowlanders, the men of the north were just as much a threat as the English to the south.
The result is a rich legacy of fortifications – Edinburgh, Stirling, Kilchurch castles; of historic battlefields – Flodden, Culloden, and Bannockburn; of larger-than-life characters – Rob Roy McGregor, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Black Agnes (betcha never heard of her!) a woman not easily beaten in a battle.
But Scotland also has a softer side, a creative dimension. Authors such as Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.M.Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, James Heriot . . . and scores of others. David Hulme, the mid-18th-century philosopher, and James Boswell, biographer of the redoubtable Samuel Johnson. The painter, Sir Henry Raeburn, whose portraits capture a golden age of culture in Scotland.
Then there’s the skill of its engineers and scientists – everything from the first postage stamp, the use of a decimal point, fingerprinting, the pedal bicycle, rugby sevens(!), to hypnotism. And I haven’t even bothered with tar-sealed roads, pneumatic tyres, penicillin, television . . . all the well-known Scottish achievements.
The result is a rich pastiche of things to see, do and experience: Edinburgh, Britain’s second most visited city with it’s mighty castle and the Royal Mile. The highlands with the romantic echoes of historic heroes, not to mention the distilling of a wee dram. Engineering marvels like the Falkirk Wheel. Famous battlefields – Bannockburn (Scots 1, English 0), Flodden (English 1, Scots 0).
So, go on, fork out a mere £9.90 and learn all the attractions Scotland has on offer.
