Walk beside the fish ladder at Pitlochry Dam and watch the salmon on the live feed in the visitor centre

Walk the loop round Loch Faskally from the dam

See a play at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre

The dam at Pitlochry was built as part of the Tummel hydro-electric scheme, flooding the valley to make Loch Faskally, and its fish ladder lets salmon climb past the turbines; the visitor centre explains the scheme and the fish. The town has the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, hills at its back, and the Edradour distillery, currently closed to visitors, in a fold of the hill east of the town.

Pitlochry: The Salmon Ladder and the Edradour

Pitlochry

Ten nights from Dunkeld to Stonehaven: Big Tree Country and Blair Castle in Highland Perthshire, reindeer and ospreys around Aviemore, the Speyside whisky trail and Tomintoul's dark skies, then Braemar and Balmoral on Royal Deeside.

Highland Perthshire, the Cairngorms and Royal Deeside

Tour Blair Castle and its white-harled front

Walk the castle's Hercules Garden and the Diana Grove

Walk the Pass of Killiecrankie to the Soldier's Leap

Look for the Atholl Highlanders' parade if you are there in late May

Blair Castle, ancestral home of Clan Murray and historic seat of the Dukes of Atholl, is said to have been begun in 1269 by John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, and still garrisons the Atholl Highlanders, the only legal private army in Europe. Four miles south, the Jacobites of Viscount Dundee broke a government army under Hugh Mackay in the Pass of Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689, winning at heavy cost and losing Dundee himself in the last moments.

Blair Atholl and Killiecrankie: The Last Private Army and the Soldier's Leap

Walk the Birks of Aberfeldy, the birch-lined glen that Robert Burns celebrated in a poem in 1787

Cross Wade's Bridge, built over the Tay in 1733 to William Adam's design

Tour the Aberfeldy distillery, built by John Dewar & Sons in 1896

See the Fortingall Yew in its churchyard, one of the oldest trees in Britain

Above Aberfeldy the Birks are a birch-lined glen that Robert Burns wrote a poem about in 1787. In the town, Wade's Bridge crosses the Tay on five arches, built in 1733 to William Adam's design for General Wade's military road north, and John Dewar & Sons built the Aberfeldy distillery in 1896. Eleven kilometres west, in the churchyard at Fortingall, grows the Fortingall Yew, one of the oldest trees in Britain — estimates run from about 2,000 years to 5,000 and more; its trunk measured 52 feet round in 1769.

Aberfeldy: The Birks, Wade's Bridge and the Fortingall Yew

Walk the Hermitage among tall Douglas firs to Ossian's Hall and the Black Linn Falls on the River Braan

Find the Parent Larch near the cathedral, the last of the Tyrolean larches of 1738

Walk round Dunkeld Cathedral, built between 1260 and 1501

Find out what happened round the cathedral in the Battle of Dunkeld in 1689

Perthshire calls itself Big Tree Country, and the Hermitage outside Dunkeld is its showpiece: a path through tall Douglas firs along the River Braan to Ossian's Hall and the Black Linn Falls. In Dunkeld the Parent Larch is the last survivor of a group of larches brought from the Tyrol in 1738, which seeded the great larch plantings of the district. The cathedral beside it was built from 1260 to 1501 on the site of a monastery founded after Columba's mission, and in 1689 the Battle of Dunkeld was fought round it.

The Hermitage and Dunkeld: Big Tree Country

Climb Schiehallion (1,083m), where Nevil Maskelyne's 1774 experiment measured the Earth's density

Look across Loch Rannoch and Rannoch Moor to Glencoe and Ben Nevis from the summit

Find out how Charles Hutton used lines of equal height, an early form of contour lines, to handle the survey of the mountain

Schiehallion — Sìth Chailleann, the fairy hill of the Caledonians — is so isolated and so regular in shape that in 1774 the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, used it to estimate the mass of the Earth, and his assistant Charles Hutton drew lines of equal height to handle the survey, an early use of contour lines. The path up the eastern side, owned by the John Muir Trust since 1999, was rebuilt in 2001 after erosion, and the top looks over Loch Rannoch and Rannoch Moor to Glencoe and Ben Nevis.

Schiehallion: The Mountain That Weighed the Earth

Hike a stretch of the 103km Cateran Trail from Blairgowrie to Kirkmichael, on old drove roads and tracks, some used by the cattle raiders it is named for

Find the waymark posts with their red heart in a green ring, and the carved drovers' faces

Walk the raspberry and bramble country round Blairgowrie the trail starts in

The Cateran Trail is a 103km circuit through Perthshire and Angus on old drove roads and ancient tracks, some of them used by the caterans who raided these glens for cattle, waymarked with a red heart in a green ring. The Blairgowrie to Kirkmichael stage climbs out of the berry fields into the glens.

Cateran Trail Adventure

Drive the A93 over the summit of the Cairnwell Pass

Ride the Cairnwell chairlift in summer, or walk up from the Glenshee Ski Centre

Find the Devil's Elbow on the old road a mile south of the summit

Look for the snow gates that close the pass in winter

The A93 crosses the Cairnwell Pass at 670m between Glen Shee and Braemar, the highest main road in the United Kingdom, with snow gates at Braemar, at the summit and at the Spittal of Glenshee. Scotland's largest and oldest ski centre sits on the summit, and a mile south the old road still shows the Devil's Elbow, a notorious double hairpin on the 1749 military road, since bypassed by the modern A93.

The Cairnwell Pass: The Highest Main Road in Britain

Stand under the 13th-century west towers of Elgin Cathedral, 27.4 metres high

See the octagonal chapter house of the 15th century

Walk Elgin's medieval street plan from the cathedral to the church of St Giles

Elgin Cathedral, the Lantern of the North, was founded in 1224 on land granted by Alexander II and became the seat of the bishops of Moray. It burned in 1270 and was attacked again in 1390 by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, the Wolf of Badenoch; even ruined, much of the 13th-century west front and the 15th-century chapter house still stand.