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

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

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

Watch boats climb Neptune's Staircase at Banavie, eight locks that lift the canal 64ft in 500 yards

See the Commando Memorial above Spean Bridge, unveiled by the Queen Mother in 1952 with views of Ben Nevis and Aonach Mòr

Cycle or walk the canal towpath between Banavie and Gairlochy

Thomas Telford's Caledonian Canal runs 60 miles from Inverness to Fort William with 29 locks, four aqueducts and 10 bridges, opened in 1822. Eight of those locks are at Banavie, where Neptune's Staircase lifts boats 64ft in 500 yards, and the towpath carries the Great Glen Way north-east from Banavie, with Ben Nevis across the valley.

The Great Glen: Neptune's Staircase and the Caledonian Canal

Tour the Dalwhinnie distillery, at 355 metres one of the highest in Scotland

Taste the Dalwhinnie 15-year-old, one of the six Classic Malts

Drive over the Pass of Drumochter, the highest point on the A9

Walk or cycle the track along the shore of Loch Ericht

Dalwhinnie — Dail Chuinnidh, the meeting place — sits at the head of Glen Truim and the north end of Loch Ericht, and at an average of 6.6°C it is one of the coldest villages in the UK. Its distillery, built in 1897 as the Strathspey Distillery between the Great North Road and the Highland Railway, stands at 355 metres, one of the highest in Scotland, and in the late 1980s it became one of the six Classic Malts. Just south, the Pass of Drumochter carries the A9 over the Grampian watershed at 460 metres, its highest point, and the railway beside it at 452 metres, the highest main line summit in the UK.

Dalwhinnie: One of Scotland's Highest Distilleries

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

Walk the Glen Shiel battlefield, where on 10 June 1719 government forces under Joseph Wightman defeated Jacobites and Spanish marines with the help of four Coehorn mortars

Look up at the Five Sisters of Kintail, the ridge above the glen, from the battlefield

Walk up towards the Bealach an Lapain for the view along the Five Sisters ridge

On 10 June 1719 a Jacobite force with Spanish troops was broken in Glen Shiel by government soldiers under Joseph Wightman, described as the last close engagement between British and foreign troops on mainland British soil. The battlefield is beside the A87 under the Five Sisters of Kintail, and the ridge above carries one of the great Highland walks.

Glen Shiel: The 1719 Battle and the Five Sisters

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.

Ben Nevis: The Mountain Track to the Top of Britain

Cross Fowler's suspension bridge over the gorge

Look up at the 46m Falls of Measach from the viewing platform

Walk the woodland trail along the rim of the gorge

Corrieshalloch is a gorge 1.5km long and 60m deep but only about 10m wide at the lip, cut by meltwater at the end of the last ice age along lines of weakness in the Moine rock. The Falls of Measach drop 46m into it, seen from a Victorian suspension footbridge built by Sir John Fowler, one of the designers of the Forth Bridge, and from a viewing platform further down. At 7 hectares it is the smallest of Scotland's national nature reserves.

Corrieshalloch Gorge and the Falls of Measach

Find the remains of the holly tree in the lowest room of Cawdor's tower

Walk the Culloden battlefield and the clan graves

Cawdor Castle was built around a living holly tree, which testing shows died about 1372; the remains are still in the lowest level of the tower, and the earliest document for the castle is a licence to fortify granted in 1454 to William Calder, 6th Thane of Cawdor. Shakespeare made Macbeth Thane of Cawdor, but the play never names the castle and it was built long after the real king's time. Eleven kilometres away, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was destroyed at Culloden on 16 April 1746 in a battle that lasted less than an hour, and the coast road runs on to Nairn and its beaches.