Climb to McCaig's Tower, the unfinished Colosseum-style folly begun in 1897 above Oban, for the view over the harbour to Kerrera and Mull

Take the small ferry to Kerrera and walk to Gylen Castle, the MacDougall tower house of 1582

Tour Oban Distillery, founded in 1794 in the centre of the town

Above Oban stands McCaig's Tower, an unfinished folly in the shape of the Colosseum begun in 1897, with a view over the harbour to Kerrera and Mull. A small ferry crosses to Kerrera, where Gylen Castle is the MacDougall tower house of 1582, and back in the middle of town is Oban Distillery, founded in 1794.

Oban and Kerrera: McCaig's Tower and Gylen Castle

Oban and Seil

Cairnryan

Nine nights in a loop from Cairnryan: Conic Hill and the islands of Loch Lomond, Inveraray on Loch Fyne, Oban and the Slate Islands, Glen Coe and the Devil's Staircase, then Stirling Castle and Alloway.

Loch Lomond, Oban and Glen Coe from Cairnryan

Sea kayak around the Isle of Seil, starting near the Clachan Bridge, the single-arch bridge of 1792 known as the 'Bridge over the Atlantic'

Paddle across Easdale Sound to Easdale, the island of the Slate Islands whose flooded slate quarries hold the World Stone Skimming Championships each September

Walk the streets of Easdale's former slate workers' cottages

The Clachan Bridge of 1792–93, a single arch over a narrow sound, joins Seil to the mainland and is known as the Bridge over the Atlantic. Seil is one of the Slate Islands, and across Easdale Sound the little island of Easdale was a centre of the British slate industry until a storm in November 1881 flooded its quarries; the flooded pits now hold the World Stone Skimming Championships every September, and the old workers' cottages still line its streets.

Seil and Easdale: The Bridge Over the Atlantic and the Slate Islands

Tour Inveraray Castle, the Gothic Revival seat of the Dukes of Argyll, chiefs of Clan Campbell, beside Loch Fyne

Visit Inveraray Jail, the 19th-century courtroom and prison museum

Climb Dun na Cuaiche above the town to the folly watchtower of 1747–48 and the view over Loch Fyne

Inveraray is the town of the Dukes of Argyll, chiefs of Clan Campbell, on Loch Fyne, and their Gothic Revival castle stands beside it. Inveraray Jail keeps the 19th-century courtroom and cells as a museum, and above the town a path climbs Dun na Cuaiche to an 18th-century folly built as a ruined watchtower, with a view over the loch.

Inveraray: The Castle, the Jail and Dun na Cuaiche

Visit Kilmartin Museum, which interprets the glen's archaeological landscape — more than 800 ancient monuments within six miles, 150 of them prehistoric

Walk the linear cemetery, five burial cairns in a three-mile line, and look inside Nether Largie South, the Neolithic chambered cairn with a chamber over 6m long

Visit the standing stones at Temple Wood and Ballymeanoch

See the cup-and-ring carvings at Achnabreck

Climb Dunadd hillfort, the Dál Riata stronghold with its carved footprint

Kilmartin Glen holds more than 800 ancient monuments within six miles, 150 of them prehistoric. Five burial cairns run in a line three miles long down the glen, including Nether Largie South, a Neolithic chambered cairn probably built in the fourth millennium BC, with a chamber over 6m long; there are standing stones at Temple Wood and Ballymeanoch, cup-and-ring carvings at Achnabreck, and at the south end Dunadd, the hillfort of the kings of Dál Riata, with a footprint carved into the rock just below the summit enclosure.

Kilmartin Glen Prehistoric Trail

Walk the Ardkinglas Woodland Garden near Cairndow, open year-round, beside Ardkinglas House, designed by Sir Robert Lorimer for Sir Andrew Noble and built in 1906–1908

Eat oysters at Loch Fyne Oysters at Cairndow, the business started in the loch in 1979

Find the Grand Fir, one of the tallest trees in Britain, in the garden

At the head of Loch Fyne, the Ardkinglas woodland garden, laid out from the 18th century with an arboretum planted in the 1860s and 1870s, holds some of the tallest conifers in Britain, and in 1979 the estate's owner, Johnny Noble, and the fish farmer Andy Lane started farming oysters in the loch — the business that became Loch Fyne Oysters. The loch itself is the longest sea loch in Scotland and the road runs down it to Inveraray.

Loch Fyne: Ardkinglas and the Oyster Bar

Walk the beaver trails round the lochs at Barnluasgan and call in at the Argyll Beaver Centre

Find a dam, a lodge or gnawed stumps by the water

Come at dusk, when beavers are most likely to be out

Walk down to the harbour at Tayvallich on Loch Sween

Beavers were hunted out of Scotland some four hundred years ago, and in May 2009 the Scottish Beaver Trial made the first official release in Britain, eleven beavers into the lochs and woods of Knapdale, run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. More were released in 2010, and in November 2016 the Scottish Government ruled they could stay for good, with protected status as a native species. A further 21 were released between 2017 and 2019 to strengthen the population.

Knapdale: Britain's First Official Beaver Release

Stop at the Three Sisters viewpoint on the A82

Walk into the Lost Valley, Coire Gabhail, between the Sisters

Look up at the Aonach Eagach wall from the glen floor

Glen Coe is a glacial trench cut through the remains of a supervolcano whose caldera-forming eruptions took place about 420 million years ago. The south side rises in the Three Sisters, shoulders of the Bidean nam Bian massif split by Coire Gabhail and Coire nan Lochan; the north side is the single wall of the Aonach Eagach ridge. On 13 February 1692 government soldiers quartered on the MacDonalds of Glencoe killed an estimated 30 of their hosts, and Signal Rock in the woods below is traditionally said to be where the signal was given.

Glen Coe: The Supervolcano and the Massacre of 1692

Cross to Jura on the short ferry from Port Askaig on Islay to Feolin

Tour the Jura distillery in Craighouse, founded in 1810 and rebuilt by 1963 to bring work back to the island

Walk the track beyond the end of the road towards Barnhill, the farmhouse where Orwell finished Nineteen Eighty-Four

Look for the Corryvreckan whirlpool between Jura and Scarba, from the north end of the island or on a boat trip, on a flood tide

Jura is one of the emptiest islands in Scotland — 258 people in the 2022 census on an island that ranks eighth by size and 29th by population, mountainous, bare and covered in wide stretches of blanket bog, with a single road up the east coast. The main village is Craighouse, where the laird, Archibald Campbell, founded the distillery in 1810; two estate owners had it rebuilt between the 1950s and 1963 to bring work back to the island. The road ends well short of the north, and two things wait beyond it. Barnhill is the remote farmhouse George Orwell rented from 1946 until January 1949, partly to escape the distractions of London literary life, and where he finished Nineteen Eighty-Four. And between Jura's northern tip and Scarba is the Gulf of Corryvreckan, where the flood tide speeds up to 8.5 knots over a deep hole and a rising pinnacle and throws up the third largest whirlpool in the world.

Jura: Craighouse, Corryvreckan and Orwell's Barnhill

Walk in the Argyll Forest Park, Britain's first forest park, created in 1935

Visit Benmore Botanic Garden, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's Argyll garden, and walk its Redwood Avenue

Walk the circular forest route from the Puck's Glen car park, linking Benmore with the wider forest

Benmore is the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's garden in Argyll, entered along an avenue of giant redwoods, in the Argyll Forest Park, which in 1935 became Britain's first forest park. From the Puck's Glen car park beside it a circular forest route links Benmore with the wider forest.