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We’re delighted to be back with a new ‘Hidden Scotland Weekly’. We really hope that you enjoy reading.

Our Isle of Skye Guide has just arrived, so we will be ending the pre-order very shortly. With every pre-order, you will receive the Isle of Skye postcard set and an illustrated Skye map. To reserve your copy, click here.

Have a great Sunday!

It’s arrived! Last chance to pre-order this weekend.
^{Free gift with every order.}

Be the first to get your hands on The Best of the Isle of Skye, Curated by Hidden Scotland and receive a free gift.

The Isle of Skye is a place of rare wonder, a wildlife-rich spread of bays, peaks, cliffs and ridges. The views are big, but the prospect of adventure is even bigger. We hope this curated Hidden Scotland guide – which takes in everything from the best walks to the finest restaurants – helps you to have your own unforgettable island escape.

Dispatching soon so be quick if you would like the free gifts.

The Falkirk Wheel

Now here’s an extraordinary piece of engineering. The iconic Falkirk Wheel has been compared to everything from a double-headed Celtic axe to the spine of a giant fish,and stands as the world’s first (and only) rotating boat lift: a £74 million project linking the Union Canal with the Forth & Clyde Canal, in the process creating a navigable waterway from the east coast to the west. When it was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, its striking appearance led the Royal Fine Arts Commission for Scotland to praise it as “a form of contemporary sculpture”. Well, quite.     

More than 1,000 construction staff helped to build the structure, using some 1,200 tons of steel and 15,000 metal bolts, each one of which was hand-tightened. Once opened, its reputation grew fast. By 2006, culture and heritage body The Saltire Society had named it the most outstanding piece of Scottish civil engineering of the past 25 years; a deserved plaudit for a piece of architecture that manages to appear both hugely complex and deceptively simple. Fast forward to today, meanwhile, and it attracts some half a million visitors a year, drawn by everything from dedicated one-hour boat trips to a kids’ water playpark.

The wheel itself was conceived as a replacement for the arduous 11-step lock system that originally connected the two canals (the Union Canal being some 100 feet higher than the Forth & Clyde below). Passing from one to the other was a process that could take countless hours, with 44 separate lock gates needing to be navigated, but the wheel’s remarkable rotating gondolas now allow vessels to do the same job in minutes. Perhaps most impressively of all, a full rotation uses up the equivalent power of boiling just eight household kettles.     

SEE & DO NEARBY

The Helix: Home Of The Kelpies

A parkland and visitor centre dominated by a pair of stunning 30m-high sculptures of horse heads – the largest of their kind in the world.

Callendar House

An absorbing mix of French renaissance stylings and Scottish baronial design, this 14^th-century mansion is home to various historic displays and a working Georgian kitchen.

Antonine Wall

The UNESCO-listed Antonine Wall was built by the Romans right across central Scotland. Part of its remains pass through the Falkirk region.

EAT & DRINK NEARBY

Fork & Mustard

A cosy café in central Falkirk, specialising in home-baked goods. Has good vegan and gluten-free options, and is dog-friendly too.

Finnegans

An award-winning Falkirk coffee shop serving reliably good breakfasts, sandwiches, cakes and snacks.

GETTING THERE

Falkirk’s two stations are well served by trains from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth and Stirling. The Wheel is around 2.5 miles from both stations, and can be reached by bus, foot, or one of the electric bikes available for hire around Falkirk. There’s also a car park. 

The Lost Jacobite Gold

A matter of weeks after the Jacobites lost the Battle of Culloden in 1746, two French ships called the Mars and Bellona arrived on the west coast. They were carrying long awaited funds and supplies from both France and Spain, ready to support Bonnie Prince Charlie’s campaign. As far as they were aware, the Jacobites were still an unbeaten force, achieving what many had believed impossible.

Once the French discovered that the cause had already been lost and Royal Navy ships were closing in, it was time to make a quick getaway. They decided that the Jacobites no longer needed French money, delivering it as ordered would have just been a waste. However, the Spanish gold was none of their concern and so seven caskets were unloaded before they fled back to sea.

One was almost immediately stolen, but there was still a small fortune left lying on a Scottish beach. Since the war was over, the intention was to use the funds to help those being punished by the government forces. However, nobody actually knows what happened to that money.

With British soldiers combing the Highlands, it’s assumed that the bulk of the gold was hidden somewhere safe. Rumours began to spread about its location and who had possession of it last. Accusations soon followed that the Jacobite chiefs who had handled the treasure were misappropriating the funds for themselves.

Fingers were pointed and people were killed over the relentless hunt for this Jacobite Gold. The last person said to hold it was Ewen MacPherson of Cluny and he may have buried it near Loch Arkaig. It wasn’t far from where the ships had unloaded their cargo, remote enough to avoid much suspicion and on land belonging to the staunch Jacobite Cameron of Lochiel.

After Prince Charles fled Scotland, he lost much of his international support and that included funds for his lavish lifestyle. He pestered Cluny for years to send him whatever gold was left but was told that it had all been used.

Charles and many other Jacobites refused to accept it. The story lives on and many still believe there’s a cache of lost Jacobite gold hidden somewhere around the banks of Loch Arkaig.

Words by Graeme Johncock

Around Scotland with Graeme Johncock

Graeme Johncock, the travel blogger and storyteller behind Scotland's Stories, is now bringing his adventures to us in a weekly column. He will journal about his explorations around Scotland, sharing fascinating stories and highlighting unique places to visit. Accompanied by his dog Molly, Graeme continues to uncover and share the rich history and beauty of Scotland.

I love encouraging people to explore new places around Scotland, pointing them in a direction that they had never even considered travelling before. However, it’s just as rewarding when I get to show them a different side to a place that they thought they knew well.

Last week I took my first trip of the year to Rosslyn Chapel just south of Edinburgh. I’m usually a more regular visitor to this incredible building, founded in the 1400s by the Sinclair family and full of amazing carvings. Every time I’m there, I spot something new, tucked away in a corner.

It’s been called a “Bible In Stone” although that seems unfair to the plants, Green Men and other symbols hidden amongst the Biblical scenes. The fact that they’ve survived this long is a wonder in itself considering that Rosslyn Chapel lay in ruin for centuries before being restored in the Victorian Period.

It’s a popular spot for tourists, partly thanks to the free publicity from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. The numbers through the chapel door doubled after the book was published and then doubled again to around 180,000 a year immediately after the film was released. However, there’s a fascinating other side to Roslin that only a tiny fraction of visitors know about.

Buried amongst the trees below the chapel stand the atmospheric ruins of Roslin Castle, perched on a large rock above a winding river. This was home to the massively wealthy Sinclair Barons of Roslin who built the famous church. It looks fairly modest at first, but take a walk beneath the enormous archway, and the scale of this gargantuan castle built into the cliffside is revealed.

It's one of my favourite places to show people, with stories just as magical as its location. There are rumours of secret staircases to hidden rooms and wild rumours that the Holy Grail is stashed away somewhere inside. The only way to find it is to stand on a specific step inside, blow a trumpet and wait for a ghostly lady to appear and lead you there. I don’t make the rules…

Sadly, this isn’t a castle that’s open for exploring, but a walk through the beautiful surrounding woodland is reward enough for venturing down here. Once you’ve laid eyes on it, I’ve no doubt you’ll be shocked that more people aren’t aware of this wee slice of history, including people who have visited for years!

Written by Graeme Johncock

Isle of Lunga - Taken by Simon Hird

Have you read issue 08? It’s still available to purchase.

We’re delighted to share with you the eighth edition of Hidden Scotland magazine. Welcome to our Spring/Summer 2024 issue. 

It’s now been four years since our first issue appeared, back in the fateful early months of 2020, and it’s a source of real pride that the magazine continues to find a growing audience. But while four years can be seen as a long time in some contexts, in the case of Orkney – captured beautifully by seasoned National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson on pages 10-17 – such a timescale is a mere grain of sand in the hourglass of history.

As Jim explains, the distant past is still very much in evidence on the Orkney archipelago, and its islands now showcase a unique blend of tradition, modernity and prehistory. The concepts of ‘Auld and New’ also underpin another guest article in this issue – on pages 148- 153 – in which interior designer and online personality Banjo Beale discusses his love of collecting beautiful things.

Between these two absorbing features you’ll find pages packed with all manner of Scottish tales and topics, from whisky, folklore and regenerative farming to a focus on some of our most impressive botanic gardens. We also look at the reintroduction of wild beavers, take a deep-dive into the wonders of Fife and spotlight the remarkable Ploterre, a creative business inspired by nature.

Elsewhere you’ll find a fantastic recipe for foraged kelp miso ramen from Café Canna in the Inner Hebrides, as well as an overview of Scotland’s Little Free Libraries and a tour of the remarkable Royal Deeside – you’ll even learn more about our own Hidden Scotland Shop, set in an old farmhouse on the Deeside Way. And as ever, there’s more to discover too.

Thanks for reading. If you're interested in our brand new Isle of Skye guide, pre-order today to receive our Isle of Skye postcard set and pull-out illustrated map by illustrator Emily Hogarth. Pre-order here.

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