Argyll

Argyll has more coastline than France — or so the frequently repeated claim goes. Whether it's exactly accurate depends on how you count the islands, but the general point stands: this is a landscape defined by sea. The Firth of Lorn, the Sound of Jura, the Firth of Clyde, and the dozens of sea lochs that cut into the mainland create a fractured geography where distances by road are always longer than distances by water. Sea kayaking here is not a peripheral activity — it's how you understand the landscape.

The islands of Argyll are varied enough to sustain multiple visits. Islay is famous for whisky — eight working distilleries — and for the 50,000 barnacle geese that arrive every October from Greenland. Jura has the famous Paps (three quartzite mountains above 700m) and a road that goes nowhere. Mull is the most accessible and most varied: the Ardmeanach peninsula in the west is genuinely wild, Tobermory is a photogenic harbour town, and from Fionnphort you can take the ferry to Iona — three minutes across the Sound — to walk around one of the most significant early Christian sites in Scotland. Colonsay has a hotel, some excellent beach walking, and connects to Oban and Islay by ferry.

On the mainland, Oban is the main ferry hub and a decent base — functional rather than beautiful, but with good fish and chips and a direct train from Glasgow. Inveraray on Loch Fyne is the most photographed town in Argyll, with the whitewashed town and the castle reflected in the loch. Kilmartin Glen, south of Inveraray, has the densest concentration of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in Scotland — standing stones, cairns, and rock carvings in a flat valley that rewards slow exploration.