I've been up north in Scotland recently! Weird being a tourist in my own country, but I really don't know Scotland as well as I should.
This is the memorial to the Jacobite uprising in Glenfinnan:
The scenery behind the memorial is vast, especially when Loch Shiel is still.
Glenfinnan also has a big railway viaduct (aka the 'Harry Potter Bridge').
This is the view from the viaduct looking back over to the monument in the middle of the photo.
...and this was a big seal begging for fish in the harbour at Mallaig, which is where the train eventually arrives at once it has been over the viaduct and continued up the coast.
Bonus "read another book" content:
This island was used for Dumbledore's grave in the Harry Potter film, albeit shopped into another Loch for whatever reason.
What is slowly coming together for me is my understanding of Scottish history. The Jacobite uprising was part of a chain of events that lead to the Highland Clearances, which is why there are so many Americans and Canadians who are proud of their Scots ancestry. Lots of folk were kicked out and replaced with sheep! The odd gangly trees on the island in my photo are one of the last scraps of the old Caledonian Pinewood that used to cover vast areas of Scotland. All that is left are these little outcrops (I saw a few others on my trip). Not only were the people displaced, and steps were taken to demolish any sort of sense of Scottish identity, but the landscape was irreversibly altered as well. Out in the Pinewood you would have found wolves, beavers and a completely different ecosystem that supported this. What was left was this vast, empty landscape that these days supports red deer over anything else.
The wilds of Scotland are stunningly beautiful at any time of year...
