Scottish Highlands & Islands Guide
Alongside the Rough Guide to Scotland is this Other Travel Guidebook
A beautiful part of the world deserves a good guidebook, and there's nowhere more beautiful than the Scottish Highlands and Islands. This new 5th edition of the Rough Guide to the region inevitably overlaps with the recently published Rough Guide to Scotland, which runs to 800 pages, but if your visit is limited to the Highlands and Islands, then this is definitely the book you need. At over 500 pages it's very good value for money.
So vast and varied is the area covered than instead of the usual 'top ten things to see' the authors have included a list of '30 Things Not to Miss'. These include the South Harris Beaches and the Caledonian Forest, the West Highland Railway and Scottish pubs, whale-watching off Mull and the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, Tobermory, Glen Coe, Islay, the Cairngorms, and the long-distance footpath the Speyside Way which wanders through Scotland's whisky glens.
Although the guide is vast and thorough, one of the most helpful sections probably amounts to no more than about 8-10 pages in all, and that's the page or so of 'Travel Details' at the end of each section. They're not exciting to read (or to write), but when you're traveling around, these pages are worth their weight in gold – what days do the island buses run, how long will the train take from Glasgow, is there a ferry every day and does it take cars, and are there any flights?
More enjoyable to read (and to write!) are the special colour sections the guide has, though it seems a bit mean to restrict Scottish Food and Drink and Scottish Wildlife to just four pages each. The great Shetland celebration of Up Helly-Aa gets half a page in a highlighted box, and these appear throughout the book on diverse subjects including Shetland ponies, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the dolphins of the Moray Firth, and George Orwell's time living on Jura, where he wrote his classic novel 1984.
The range of these subjects shows just what a rich area the Scottish Highlands and Islands is. Travelers need a guidebook that can not only convey those stories with enthusiasm, but can also tell you the cost of a hotel room in Balmoral (if Her Majesty can't put you up for the night), the phone number of the airport on Orkney, and the times of the tours for all the whisky distilleries on Islay. And in that the Rough Guide to the Scottish Highlands and Islands succeeds admirably.
Practical Information
The 5th edition of the Rough Guide to the Scottish Highlands and Islands is published in June 2008 and costs $18.99 in the USA, $21 in Canada and £11.99 in the UK. More details on the Rough Guides website.
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