X-Nico

38 unusual facts about Scottish Highlands


1752 in Great Britain

17 March - Parliament passes a bill to bestow estates forfeited by Jacobites to the Crown and to use the revenue to develop the Scottish Highlands.

2009 Scottish Cup Final

A trip to the Highlands ensued for the quarter-final after Falkirk were drawn away to Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

Agriculture in Scotland

The biggest plantations and timber resources are to be found in Dumfries and Galloway, Tayside, Argyll and the Scottish Highlands.

Alastair Bruce

The following year, he erected a cairn at Sallachy, above Loch Shin in the north west Scottish Highlands, in memory of his orderly during the War, Guardsman James Reynolds, from the village of Bridge of Weir in Renfrewshire, who had died while bringing back a wounded comrade, who survived.

Angie Lewin

Inspired by both the clifftops and saltmarshes of the North Norfolk coast and the Scottish Highlands, Lewin depicts these contrasting environments and their native flora in wood engraving, linocut, silkscreen, lithograph and collage.

Arthur MacArthur, Sr.

MacArthur was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the descendant of Highlander nobility through his father, who had died just seven days before his birth in 1815.

Beinn a' Chaorainn

Beinn a' Chaorainn (Mountain Of The Rowan Tree) is the name of two Munro mountains in the Scottish Highlands.

Bothy

They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands (but related buildings can be found around the world, e.g. in the Nordic countries there are wilderness huts).

Desmond Nethersole-Thompson

Although brought up in the south of England, from the 1930s he spent most of his life in Scotland and is notable for his contribution to ornithology through his monographs on various birds of the Scottish Highlands, as well as his other writings.

Foot plough

It is an implement of tillage peculiar to the Highlands, used for turning the ground where an ordinary plough cannot work on account of the rough, stony, uneven ground.

Forestry in the United Kingdom

For example, in Scotland four main areas have been identified: oak dominated forest south of the Highland Line, Scots Pine in the Central Highlands, hazel/oak or pine/birch/oak assemblages in the north-east and south-west Highlands, and birch in the Outer Hebrides, Northern Isles and far north of the mainland.

Formica exsecta

In Great Britain, F. exsecta can be found only in a few scattered heathland locations in South West England — principally Chudleigh Knighton Heath and nearby Bovey Heath which are both managed by the Devon Wildlife Trust, and in the central Scottish Highlands (including Rannoch Moor).

George Burns, 2nd Baron Inverclyde

The Burns' fleet of ships amounted to over 100 vessels, trading between the Clyde, Ireland, Liverpool, and the Scottish Highlands.

Glen Pean powerline span

The Glen Pean Powerline Span is a span of an overhead powerline which crosses Glen Pean, west of Loch Arkaig in the Highlands of Scotland.

Highland 2007

Highland 2007 was a year-long celebration of Highland culture which took place from January until December 2007.

Highlandman railway station

It was named after the drovers who passed through the area on their way between the Highlands and markets in the south.

HMS St Christopher

HMS St Christopher was the Royal Navy's Coastal Forces Training Base from October 1940 to December 1944 in Fort William and Corpach in the Scottish Highlands.

Horatio McCulloch

He undertook regular summer sketching tours of the West Highlands, completing the sketches as paintings as back in his studio.

These paintings celebrate the romantic scenery of the Scottish Highlands and evoke a magnificent sense of scale, emphasizing the dramatic grandeur.

Jack M. Ducker

Many of the painter's documented artworks feature a muddy, earthy color pallet with emphasis on the atmospheric and rusty color spectrum that the Scottish highland mountains provide.

Johnny Kingdom

One-off programmes have also been shown featuring visits to Lapland and to the Scottish Highlands.

Jon Ashton

In May 2007, Ashton was arrested with Danny Foster, facing three counts of vandalism after the pair danced in the streets of a Scottish Highlands town wrapping themselves in lager advertising banners.

Joseph Bampfield

When Lord Balcarres, in 1653, began to put into operation a scheme for a rising in the Highlands, Bampfield made his way to Scotland and again sought out Anne Murray, who had always given him credit for believing that his wife was dead.

Julian Haviland

He moved to the picturesque lochside retreat of Tomintianda, on the banks of Loch Tummel in Strathtummel, a few miles north-west of the largely Victorian-built town of Pitlochry in Perthshire, in the Scottish Highlands, where he wrote two books and occasionally contributed to national political debate.

Lemmings 2: The Tribes

Exceptions to this include the beach tribe (tan skin, as they get the most sun), the polar tribe (light blue hair, a reflection of the cold environment they live in), the highlands tribe (orange hair, a stereotype associated with the Scottish Highlands), and the shadow tribe (black hair and tan skin).

Lizie Lindsay

A highland Laird courts Lizie Lindsay in Edinburgh, sometimes after his mother had warned him not to hide his highland origins.

MacGuffin

The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."

Moores Creek National Battlefield

Loyalists, mostly Scottish Highlanders, many of whom did not have muskets and were wielding broadswords, expected to find only a small Patriot force on February 27, 1776.

Open Air Club

The club also runs two trips to the Scottish Highlands each year - a three or four day trip (usually to a campsite) over the May bank holiday, and a week-long holiday over the New Year.

Patrick Meik

In the 1900s, their firm was commissioned to design the Kinlochleven hydroelectric scheme in the Scottish Highlands.

Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno

In July 1976, an airplane was involved in an accident in the Scottish Highlands while on a charter flight from Blackpool to Perth, killing the pilot and five passengers instantly.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow

The progress of the Industrial Revolution also began to draw to the city and its neighbourhood Roman Catholics from the Scottish Highlands and later, in far greater numbers, from Ireland.

Sudipta Sengupta

Apart from doing structural field studies in varied terrain, including the Precambrian structures of Peninsular India, the Scottish Highlands, the Scandinavian Caledonides and East Antarctica.

Susan Jeune, Baroness St Helier

Susan Mary Elizabeth Stewart-Mackenzie was born in Munich circa 1845, daughter of Keith William Stewart-Mackenzie, of Brahan Castle in the northern Highlands of Scotland, and his wife, Hannah Charlotte (née Hope-Vere).

The View from Castle Rock

Robert and William had moved to the Highlands before the move, while the others followed in the voyage.

Thomas George Bonney

His attention was specially directed to the study of the igneous and metamorphic rocks in Alpine regions and in various parts of England (e.g.: the Lizard in Cornwall, at Salcombe and in the Charnwood Forest), Wales and the Scottish Highlands.

Thomas Miles Richardson

He worked chiefly in watercolour, and found most of his subjects in the scenery of the Borders and the Scottish Highlands, though in later life he went as far afield as Italy and Switzerland.

Warnings/Promises

Following a tour supporting Pearl Jam, and festival appearances in the UK, the band rented a house in the Scottish Highlands to begin writing the follow-up to The Remote Part.


Amanita nivalis

It was first described by the Scottish mycologist Robert Kaye Greville in 1826 from specimens found growing at high altitudes in the Scottish Highlands.

Annie Meinertzhagen

Born Anne Constance Jackson, her parents were Major and Mrs Randle Jackson of Swordale, a village in eastern Ross-shire in the Scottish Highlands.

Athyrium distentifolium

It is a common upland variety above 600 metres in the Highlands of Scotland, with more than 10% of the UK population being found in the Cairngorm mountains, especially on scree slopes in Glen Feshie, and on Ben Avon, Ben MacDui and Beinn a' Bhùird.

Battle of Achnashellach

The Battle of Achnashellach was a Scottish clan battle said to have taken place in the year 1505, in the Scottish Highlands at Achnashellach.

Bunkhouse

Bunkhouses are usually found in mountainous areas, such as the Scottish Highlands, as well as rural areas in England and Wales, for example at All Stretton.

Calaminarian grassland

In the United Kingdom they are predominantly found on industrial or post-industrial land, especially in the east of Cumbria and western dales, the Peak District and north west Wales and parts of the Scottish Highlands.

Charles Herbert Mackintosh

Paternally, he claimed to be a near relation of the essayist and politician, the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, who was member of the Kellachie branch of the Inverness-shire-based Clan Mackintosh, part of the Scottish Highlands Chattan Confederation.

Disappearance of Sarah MacDiarmid

MacDiarmid, who emigrated with her family in 1987 from the Scottish Highlands to Australia, had been playing tennis after work with two friends at what was then known as Flinders Park in Batman Avenue, East Melbourne, before walking to Richmond station, where they found that they had just missed a Frankston line train.

Kinmylies

Kinmylies is an area in the west end of the city of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.

Laxdale Hall

A British parliamentary delegation is dispatched to the Scottish Highlands where the residents are protesting at their poor links with the outside world.

Margaret McMurray

Despite their similar appearance, the names 'McMurray' and 'Murray' come from separate origins, the former being related to the Murphys in Ireland and the Murchisons in the Scottish Highlands, and the latter's origin being de Moray (of Moray).

Milntown Castle

Milntown Castle was an early 16th-century castle which was situated near Milton, in Easter Ross, in the Scottish Highlands.

Privy Council of Scotland

The council supervised the administration of the law, regulated trade and shipping, took emergency measures against the plague, granted licences to travel, administered oaths of allegiance, banished beggars and Gypsies, dealt with witches, recusants, Covenanters and Jacobites and tackled the problem of lawlessness in the Highlands and the Borders.

Pumpkintown, South Carolina

The first white settler, in 1745, was 30-years old Cornelius Keith, a Scottish Highlander who was born at Loch Lomond and as a child had immigrated to Brunswick County, Virginia, to later move with his wife Juda and a son into this frontier area of the Carolinas.

Scottish Crossbill

The Scottish Crossbill breeds in the native Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), Caledonian forests of the Scottish Highlands, but (perhaps surprisingly), often also in forestry plantations of exotic conifers, notably Larch (Larix decidua and L. kaempferi) and Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta).

Thomas Atholl Robertson

He was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland the senior antiquarian body in Scotland and wrote articles on Scottish and Highland Customs, Folklore and Legends of Perthshire.

Year of the Comet

The bottle changes hands several times as the parties race across Europe from the Scottish Highlands to Èze.