Skara Brae, Orkney
It can be a windy 500m walk to this remarkable shoreline site, which contains the subterranean remains of a compact 5,000-year-old village. After being engulfed by a sandstorm, it lay perfectly preserved until it was uncovered by the laird’s dog after another storm in 1850. Now it permits one of the most evocative glimpses of truly ancient times in the UK.
Callanish Standing Stones, Lewis
The best-preserved and most unusual combination of standing stones in a ring around a tomb, with radiating arms in cross shape. Predating Stonehenge, they were unearthed from the peat in the mid-19th century and are the Hebrides’ main historical attraction. At dawn and dusk hardly anyone else is there. Visitor centre has a caff.
Clava Cairns, Culloden
Here long before the most infamous battle in Scottish history, these chambered cairns in a grove of trees are really just piles of stones, but the death-rattle echo from 5,000 years ago is perceptible to all, especially when no one else is there. The site’s remoteness probably inhibits new age attentions and allows more private meditations in this extraterrestrial spot.
Mousa Broch, Shetland
Isolated in its island fastness, this is the best-preserved broch in Scotland. Walls are 13m high (originally 15m) and galleries run up the middle, in one case to the top. One Norse saga recounts how an eloping couple sheltered here after a shipwreck en route to Iceland in 900. Solid as a rock, this example of a uniquely Scottish phenomenon would have been a very des res.
Kilmartin Glen, Lochgilphead
Home to Dunadd hillfort and the greatest concentration of neolithic and Bronze Age artefacts in Scotland, Kilmartin Glen is best explored on a two-hour walking loop from Kilmartin’s 13th-century graveyard. Look for a “cup and saucer’’, standing stones, chambered tombs and burial cairns.
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Taken from Scotland the Best by Peter Irvine (£15.99, HarperCollins)
