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Each year, Burns Night takes place on 25 January to celebrate the life and legacy of Scotland’s National Bard, Robert Burns. Whether you call Scotland home or you’re marking it from further afield, it’s a day that pulls people back towards the same stories, songs and sense of place.

To mark the occasion, this week’s email follows Burns beyond Alloway, with Graeme Johncock tracing a route from his Ayrshire beginnings through Mauchline and Ellisland Farm, then on to Dumfries for the Globe Inn, the Burns Centre, his final home, St Michael’s, and the mausoleum.

There’s a Sunday Special Offer running today too. Issue 02 is £8 and comes with a free cover print and bookmark, and it’s also last chance to get the discounted Hidden Scotland set at £90 (usually £150), with The Best of Skye book included free this weekend.

Elsewhere, the wildlife feature looks at the Scottish wildcat and the conservation work underway to protect the Highland tiger, and this week’s accommodation recommendation is The Scullery in the Scottish Borders, a one-bedroom hideaway in the Yarrow Valley.

Enjoy the quiz this week, and good luck.

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.

Every year, thousands of people head to Alloway to see the birthplace of Scotland’s National Poet – Robert Burns. However, that’s just the start of the bard’s journey and I always encourage people to follow his footsteps just a little further. There are many more interesting places to see between his Ayrshire birthplace and burial in Dumfries!

Burns Birthplace Cottage & Museum

Alloway is the obvious place to start for anybody interested in Robert Burns. Not only can you find the restored cottage where he spent the first few years of his life, there’s also a wealth of artefacts on display in the museum!

Of course, there are plenty of things you would expect to find in a museum dedicated to a writer, like his desk or handwritten copies of poetry. To me, the most interesting items that give a real connection to Burns the man were basic things like his initialled sock or shaving razer!

Mauchline Burns House Museum

25 minute drive

As a young adult, Robert Burns took on a farm near Mauchline where he would meet the love of his life Jean Armour. It’s said that Burns’ dog ran over Jean’s clean washing at the drying green and her angry shouts were the first words they shared!

It’s free to explore the house where they lived together when first married, including the room Jean gave birth to the first of their children. There are rare manuscripts and other interesting items from the bard’s life as well as information about the people that inspired his poetry who lived in Mauchline.

Ellisland Farm

1 hour drive

If there’s one place that brings Burns’ story to life most for me, then it’s Ellisland Farm. Robert Burns built the farmhouse and worked it with Jean, finally living his dream life. Despite the hard labour and long hours, this is where most of his poetry and songs were created! Here, you can stand in the room where Auld Lang Syne was written or walk the river path where Tam o Shanter was conjured up!

It’s said that when Burns was offered his choice of plots for building his farm, he picked the prettiest spot over the best farmland. Clearly, he knew what he was talking about, but sadly the farm was never productive. In the end, he was forced to take on a job as an exciseman to help make ends meet and soon left Ellisland behind.

Lunch At The Globe Inn

15 minute drive

The 400-year-old Globe Inn was Robert Burns’ favourite drinking den, but these days it’s a very nice restaurant and bar. As well as enjoying some fine dining, you can book onto a tour to see some of the rooms familiar to the poet.

The highlight for me is the opportunity to sit in Burns’ actual chair like a true fanboy There’s only one rule though – you have to recite some Burns poetry or buy a round for the whole bar!

Robert Burns Centre

10 minute walk

Along the banks of the River Nith you’ll find another visitor centre dedicated to Robert Burns inside an old Mill. As well as the informational video and collection of items, it’s the scale model of Old Dumfries that I find truly fascinating! It’s displayed just as it would have been in the late 18^th century to give you a Burns-eye view of the town!

Dumfries Burns House Museum

10 minute walk

Like most buildings where Burns lived, his Dumfries home has been turned into a small museum. This is where the poet died at the age of 37 and Jean carried on living for 40 years after! It’s a real treasure trove of stories and you can even find Burns’ signature etched into the window!

My favourite item is a copy of Burns’ work dedicated to Mrs Graham of Fintry with the line, “May every child of yours, in the hour of need, find such a friend as I shall teach every child of mine that their father found in you.”

St Michael’s Church

A short stroll from the Robert Burns House is the beautiful St Michael’s Church. As the oldest church in Dumfries, there’s a lot of history packed in here with plenty of nods to Robert Burns. You can even sit in the Burns family pew, and imagine the poet watching a wee bug crawling in a girl’s hair, inspiring To A Louse.

The Burns Mausoleum

The graveyard of the church is full of fascinating graves, some incredibly elaborate, although that’s not what Burns got to begin with! Thousands attended his funeral, but he was laid to rest in a simple grave, squeezed in the corner.

In 1817, his body was exhumed to be placed in the bright white mausoleum that you can visit today. Open during the tourist season, it also holds two of his sons and Jean Armour. It’s a more fitting reminder of Scotland’s National Poet, somehow incredibly simple but still magnificently grand, just like Robert Burns himself!

Read this full itineary online today for free.

Written by Graeme Johncock To check out more of Graeme’s Scottish Itinearies, click here.

While English football fans like to chant “It’s coming home” during international football tournaments, recent investigations have suggested that it was really Scotland who invented modern football! Games called football have been played longer than records have been kept but were originally what we call mob football – closer to an enormous game of rugby than the beautiful game. While the English Football Association began to codify the rules in 1863, their game looked very different than we might expect, focusing on one player dribbling at a time. Then in Queen’s Park, Glasgow in 1867, a group of Scots started passing the ball instead, inventing the combination game and going on to dominate international matches for years, winning 10 against England and drawing 3 out of 14 games!

Order Issue 02 today for £8 and it will arrive with a free cover print and bookmark. It’s a spring-led issue, with puffins on the cover and features on wild foraging, wild swimming, Speyside whisky, Shetland knitting traditions, Argyll’s castles, Scottish folklore, and a hand-picked selection of remote places to stay across Scotland.

As majestic as they are rare, Scotland’s wildcats are facing a desperate plight. Since they arrived in Britain over 9,000 years ago, numbers have dwindled to double digits. Here we trace their history, characteristics, and what is being done to save them.

Broad-winged golden eagles, magnificent-antlered red deer, and bright-eyed red squirrels – these are among the wildlife you might spot in the Highlands. The Scottish wildcat is also on the list, but to sight one? For that you would have to be extraordinarily lucky. Scottish wildcats, fondly dubbed Highland tigers, are an isolated population of the European wildcat, Felis silvestris, and numbers have dwindled to a worrying low. Experts describe the species as functionally extinct, with the remaining individuals too fragmented or hybrised to count.

Before you start picturing pussies purring, this is not a case of domestic cat gone wild. Wildcats can be a similar size to pet cats, but they have thicker, tiger-striped coats and blunt, bushy tails with distinct black rings. More importantly, the Highland tiger is one of our island’s last remaining natural predators. It has an angular jaw adapted for crunching live prey – mainly rabbits, mice and voles – and it pounces with power.

Wildcats moved into Britain as the glaciers melted, at the end of the last Ice Age, evolving from a population of European wildcats that became isolated by the English Channel. Historically, it lived across the UK, but is now only found in the Scottish Highlands, where Scottish Wildcat Action, the first national conservation plan for wildcats from 2015 to 2020, found evidence of the species in five areas – Morvern, Strathpeffer, Northern Strathspey, Angus Glens and Strathbogie.

The Highland tiger, whose Latin name translates roughly as ‘woodland cat’, thrives in extensive wild country and forest. So extensive deforestation spelled disaster for the species at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when tree felling activities in England drove the cats north. More recently, much of Scotland has become farmed or deforested – only around one per cent of the country’s native pinewoods remain, according to rewilding organisation Trees for Life. Deforestation added to the troubles of the wildcat population, which had already faced persecution in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, when it was frequently shot for its fur. It first received legal protection in 1988.

Scotland’s wildcat population is now at a shocking low, with estimates ranging between a few dozen and a couple of hundred. Because the wildcats shy away from humans, getting a precise number is tricky. Tracking relies on trail camera technology and luring the cat to leave some of its hair on a Velcro pad to determine its so-called pelage score, or wildcat characteristics – to determine the percentage of wildcat DNA.

It is interbreeding with domestic cats – resulting in these so-called hybrids, which are neither domestic nor wild – that has created the greatest recent threat to the wild population. Saving Wildcats, a European partnership project, led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), that builds on the work of Scottish Wildcat Action, warns that genetic introgression could soon wipe out the native wildcat, which is so iconic it has been used in clan heraldry since the 13th century.

Dr. Keri Langridge, Saving Wildcats Field Manager, explains: “Interbreeding with domestic cats continues to be a serious threat to wildcats in Scotland because there are so few of them, thanks to centuries of relentless persecution, and because their natural habitat has been destroyed and replaced with a human-dominated landscape where they are forced to live in close proximity to domestic cats.

Between 2022 and 2026, the Saving Wildcats initiative aims to release at least 20 cats per year into areas deemed safe – areas where threats have been removed and local communities and landowners are supporting wildcatfriendly practices. These include neutering and vaccinating pet cats, because “neutered and vaccinated cats present no threat”, according to Dr. Langridge. Communities can help by reporting sightings of feral cats so the initiative can trap, neuter, vaccinate and return them.

“Landowners can also help us by reporting sightings – particularly farmers, as feral cats often congregate around hay barns or other outbuildings,” Dr. Langridge continues. “And by managing the habitat in a way that benefits wildcats, such as encouraging rabbits and small mammal populations, and conducting precautionary predator control that does not involve indiscriminate methods, such as snaring.” 

The project is supported by the UK’s wildcat conservation breeding programme in over 30 zoos and wildlife parks across the UK, which is managed by the RZSS. In 2020, it reported a record breeding year, with 57 wildcat kittens welcomed into the world. They could be a lifeline for this majestic ancient species that, without our help, will soon no longer prowl the misty glens and deep forests it has called home for more than 9,000 years.

Read the full article online.

words // Emily Rose Mawson - photography // Saving Wildcats

This week's accommodation recommendation…

Tucked away in the heart of the Yarrow Valley, The Scullery is a one-bedroom boutique hideaway, eloquently designed for comfort, calm, and connection. Whether you’re escaping the city or craving a countryside reset, this is your space to slow down and just be.

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This month we’re running a very special offer on our magazine set. Receive every available issue for £90 (usually £150), and when you order the set this weekend, we’ll even include our The Best of Skye book (worth £18) free of charge, packed in with your order.

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