Take a boat trip on Loch Ness, 37km long and 229.8m deep, with more water than all the lakes of England and Wales combined

Visit the Loch Ness Experience in Drumnadrochit, formerly the Loch Ness Centre, on the story of the monster first brought to world attention in 1933

Explore Urquhart Castle, the medieval ruin on the loch's western shore

Look down the loch from the ruins of Urquhart Castle, where several of the best-known monster photographs were taken

Loch Ness is 37km long and 229.8m deep and holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined. Drumnadrochit on the western shore has the Loch Ness Experience, which sets out the evidence and the explanations, and Urquhart Castle stands on Strone Point, where some of the best-known monster photographs were taken.

Loch Ness Monster Hunt

Loch Ness

From Loch Lomond to Inverness by Glen Coe and Skye: Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis, the Jacobite steam train over Glenfinnan, Eilean Donan, the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing, and the boat from Elgol to Loch Coruisk.

Skye and the West Highlands

Watch a boat work up the five-lock flight in the centre of the village

Walk the canal bank from the top lock towards Kytra

Look out over Loch Ness from the pier at the foot of the locks

At the south-west end of Loch Ness, the Caledonian Canal climbs through the middle of Fort Augustus in a flight of five locks, with the A82 crossing on a swing bridge at their foot. General Wade built a fort here between 1729 and 1742 after the 1715 rising and named it for the Duke of Cumberland; Benedictine monks later founded Fort Augustus Abbey on the site.

Fort Augustus: Five Locks in the Middle of the Village

Walk into the passage of the north-east cairn

See how the passages line up with the midwinter sunset

Walk the ring of standing stones around each cairn

Find the kerb stones carved with cup marks

The Balnuaran of Clava lie in a grove of trees by the River Nairn: three Bronze Age cairns in a line running north-east to south-west, the two at the ends passage graves with their entrances oriented south-west towards the midwinter sunset, each ringed by standing stones. The site gave its name to the whole class of Clava cairns, and the Culloden battlefield is a couple of miles away.

Clava Cairns: Bronze Age Tombs Aligned on the Midwinter Sun

See the pump room and taste the sulphur water if it is running

Visit the Highland Museum of Childhood in the old station

Walk up to the Touchstone Maze above the village

Sulphurous springs found in the 18th century turned Strathpeffer into a Victorian spa resort, with a pavilion of 1880 built to entertain the visitors and a railway branch to bring them in. The pump room still stands, the old station now holds shops and the Highland Museum of Childhood, and the Rogie Falls and Ben Wyvis are on the doorstep.

Strathpeffer: The Victorian Spa in the Highlands

Walk the path from the A832 through the cloth-hung trees to the spring

Look at which rags have rotted away and which have not — the custom needs cloth that decays, and synthetic rags defeat it

Find the spring at the centre of the trees, dedicated to Saint Curetán

Drive on to Chanonry Point, the spit between Fortrose and Rosemarkie, to watch for bottlenose dolphins on a rising tide

The Clootie Well near Munlochy on the Black Isle — Tobar Churadain in Gaelic — is an ancient spring dedicated to Saint Curetán, and rags are still tied to the bushes and trees round it. The belief was that the well could cure: you dipped a rag in the water, tied it to a branch, and as the cloth rotted away the illness went with it. Sick children were once left beside it overnight in the hope of a cure. Forestry and Land Scotland, which looks after it, asks visitors to leave only small, biodegradable cloths.

The Munlochy Clootie Well

Walk the Highland Folk Museum in Newtonmore, founded in 1935 by Dr Isabel Frances Grant, and step into Baile Gean, its reconstructed early-18th-century township

Watch the live interpretation in the reconstructed buildings

Walk through the buildings that take the story on to the mid-20th century

Dr Isabel Frances Grant founded the Highland Folk Museum in 1935, having curated a Highland Exhibition of 2,100 artefacts in Inverness in 1930; she started it in a disused church on Iona, and it is now an open-air museum at Newtonmore owned by the Highland Council. It shows everyday life in the Highlands from the 1700s to the mid-20th century through reconstructed and relocated buildings, with live interpretation, and at its heart is Baile Gean, a reconstructed early-18th-century township.

Newtonmore: The Highland Folk Museum

Watch for bottlenose dolphins from Chanonry Point on a rising tide

See Stevenson's lighthouse of 1846 at the point

Visit Hugh Miller's birthplace cottage in Cromarty

Chanonry Point runs out into the Moray Firth on a spit between Fortrose and Rosemarkie, and is one of the best places in the UK to watch bottlenose dolphins from the shore, especially on an incoming tide when they fish the current. Alan Stevenson's lighthouse at the tip was first lit in 1846. Along the coast at Cromarty, the geologist Hugh Miller was born on 10 October 1802, and his birthplace cottage is kept as a museum.

The Black Isle: Chanonry Point Dolphins and Hugh Miller's Cromarty

Join a hill visit to the free-ranging reindeer herd, reintroduced to the Cairngorms in 1952, from the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre at Glenmore

Watch the ospreys from the RSPB's Loch Garten Nature Centre in Abernethy Forest, where two Scandinavian birds nested in 1954

Look for capercaillie, crested tit and the Scottish crossbill, the only bird species unique to Britain, in the Caledonian pine forest

Reindeer were brought back to the Cairngorms in 1952, and the free-ranging herd is visited on the hill from the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre at Glenmore. In 1954 two Scandinavian ospreys nested of their own accord at Loch Garten in Abernethy Forest, the return of a species that had been wiped out in Britain, and ospreys have nested there almost every year since 1959. The same Caledonian pine forest holds capercaillie, crested tits and the Scottish crossbill, the only bird species found nowhere but Britain.

Cairngorms Wildlife: Reindeer, Ospreys and Capercaillie

Climb Ben Nevis (1,345m), the highest mountain in the British Isles, by the Mountain Track from Achintee — about 8km each way and 1,300m of ascent on the path built in 1883

Find the ruins of the summit observatory, staffed continuously from 1883 to 1904, beside the war memorial cairn and survival shelter

Stand on the 40-hectare summit plateau, where in ideal conditions the view stretches over 190km

Be in Fort William on the first Saturday of September for the Ben Nevis Race, run in its present form since 1937

Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in the British Isles at 1,345m. The Mountain Track from Achintee, built in 1883, climbs about 1,300m in roughly 8km — about 17km there and back — to a 40-hectare summit plateau. The observatory was staffed without a break from 1883 to 1904, and its ruins stand beside the war memorial cairn and the emergency shelter; on a clear day the view reaches more than 190km. On the first Saturday of September runners race to the top and back in the Ben Nevis Race, run in its present form since 1937.