Scottish Highlands

The Scottish Highlands are considered to be the mountainous regions of Scotland north of the Highland Boundary Fault. The Highland Council manages a small part of this area.

The area is generally sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region. Regional administrative centres include Inverness.

Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Culture 2 Historical Geography 3 Geology 4 Towns and villages 5 Places of interest 6 Historic names of areas in the Highlands include:

Culture

Culturally the area is quite different from the Scottish Lowlands. Most of the Highlands fall into the region known as the Gaidhealtachd, pronounced Gailtahk, which was, within the last hundred years, the Gaelic speaking area of Scotland.

Historical Geography

In traditional British geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of a line drawn from Dumbarton[?] to Stonehaven, including the Inner and Outer Hebrides and the former county of Bute[?], but excluding the Orkneys and Shetlands, Caithness[?], the flat coastal land of the former shires of Nairn[?], Elgin and Banff, and all East Aberdeenshire. This area differred from the Lowlands[?] by language and race, better preserving the Gaelic speech. Even in a historical sense the Highlanders were a separate people from the Lowlanders, with whom, during many centuries, they shared nothing in common. The town of Inverness is usually regarded as the capital of the Highlands.

Geology

The Highlands consist of an old dissected plateau, or block, of ancient crystalline rocks with incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and by ice, the resulting topography being a wide area of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have nearly the same height above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Towns and villages

• Back of Keppoch Ballachulish[?]
• Dalwhinnie[?]
• Fort William
• Glencoe
• Kingussie[?] Kinlochleven[?] Kyle of Lochalsh[?]
• Mallaig[?]
• Newtonmore[?]
• North Ballachulish[?]
• Plockton[?]
• South Ballachulish[?]
• Tobermory[?]
• Tomintoul[?]
• Braemar[?]
• Blair Atholl[?]
• Aberfeldy[?]
• Kinloch Rannoch[?]
• Killin[?]
• Crianlarich[?]
• Taynuilt[?]
• Oban[?]
• Inveraray[?]

Places of interest

• Castle Tioram[?]
• Glencoe Ski Centre[?]
• Glen Orchy[?]
• Glen Spean[?]
• Loch Linnhe[?]
• Loch Lochy[?]
• Rannoch Moor[?]
• Tor Castle[?]
• Glen Coe[?]
• Glen Lyon[?]
• Loch Rannoch[?]
• Loch Katrine[?]
• West Highland Way

Historic names of areas in the Highlands include:

• Sutherland[?]
• Assynt[?]
• Coigach[?]
• Kintail[?]
• Knoydart[?]
• Morar[?]
• Moidart[?]
• Sunart[?]
• Ardnamurchan[?]
• Morvern[?]
• Ardgour[?]
• Lochaber[?]
• Appin[?]
• Lorne[?]
• Argyll[?]
• Knapdale[?]
• Cowall[?]
• Strathspey[?]
• Badenoch
• Rannoch[?]
• Atholl[?]
• Breadalbane[?]
• Trossachs[?]