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.

Elgin: The Lantern of the North

Speyside

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

Visit the Scottish Dolphin Centre at Spey Bay, run by Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and watch for the Moray Firth's resident bottlenose dolphins, a population of about 190

Look for harbour porpoises and minke whales on the same coast

Walk the shingle spit at the mouth of the Spey

At Spey Bay, where the Spey meets the Moray Firth across a shingle spit, the Scottish Dolphin Centre is run by Whale and Dolphin Conservation in an old salmon fishing station. The firth holds a resident population of bottlenose dolphins, and porpoises and minke whales pass along the same coast.

Spey Bay: The Dolphin Centre at the Mouth of the Spey

Tour Glenfiddich in Dufftown, whose first spirit ran on Christmas Day 1887 after William Grant founded the distillery

Watch the coopers at work at the Speyside Cooperage in Craigellachie

Follow the Malt Whisky Trail, which links seven working Speyside distilleries, the Dallas Dhu museum and the Speyside Cooperage

Speyside holds more malt distilleries than anywhere else in Scotland. Glenfiddich in Dufftown ran its first spirit on Christmas Day 1887, the Speyside Cooperage at Craigellachie still repairs casks by hand in front of visitors, and the Malt Whisky Trail links seven of its working distilleries, the Dallas Dhu museum and the cooperage.

Speyside Whisky Trail

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.

Cawdor, Culloden and Nairn: The Holly Tree and the Last Battle on British Soil

Stargaze from the Tomintoul Field of Hope, one of the park's three dark sky discovery sites

Drive out to Blairfindy Moor or the Carrachs in the Braes of Glenlivet for the other two

Visit The Glenlivet distillery at Minmore, grown from the farm distillery George Smith licensed in 1824

Walk the grid of streets the Duke of Gordon laid out in 1775

Tomintoul was laid out on a grid by the 4th Duke of Gordon in 1775, and at 345 metres it is billed as the highest village in the Highlands, though Wanlockhead in Dumfries and Galloway, at 466 metres, is the highest in Scotland. It stands by the River Avon inside the Cairngorms National Park, and the country round it is the Glenlivet Estate, 58,000 acres of the Crown Estate. Tomintoul and Glenlivet became the first International Dark Sky Park in the Scottish Highlands in November 2018, with three discovery sites for stargazing — the Tomintoul Field of Hope, the Carrachs in the Braes of Glenlivet and Blairfindy Moor — each with a car park and boards telling you what to look for. The glen was known for illicit whisky until the Excise Act of 1823; the next year George Smith started a licensed distillery on his farm at Upper Drumin, the first in the Livet valley; it moved down the hill to Minmore in 1859 and grew into The Glenlivet, fourteen kilometres from the village.

Tomintoul and Glenlivet: The Highlands' First Dark Sky Park

Tour Duff House and its picture collection

Walk the Duff House grounds along the Deveron

Cross the bridge to Macduff and its working harbour

William Adam designed Duff House for William Duff, Lord Braco, and work on it began in 1735 and stopped in 1741 with the interior unfinished — a baroque block so expensive that owner and architect ended in a five-year court case, and Lord Braco never slept a night in it. The Dukes of Fife gave it to Banff in 1906, and it now holds a gallery of the National Galleries of Scotland. The Georgian town of Banff and the fishing village of Macduff stand on either side of the Deveron mouth.

Banff and Duff House: William Adam on the Deveron

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

Find the Witch's Stone in Littletown, cut with the date 1722

Walk the beach and links east of the town

Dornoch keeps its 13th-century cathedral, the old town jail and a castle that is now a hotel, and its links and beach run for miles along the firth. It is also the last place in Scotland where a witch was burned: a woman recorded as Janet Horne was tried and condemned in 1727, although some accounts give 1722, the date cut on the Witch's Stone that marks the place.

Dornoch: The Cathedral and the Last Witch Burned in Scotland

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.