Climb Conic Hill from Balmaha on the West Highland Way

Pick out the line of the fault in the islands from the summit

Take the boatyard ferry out to Inchcailloch, or the mail boat round the inhabited islands in summer

Walk the shore path along the loch from the boatyard

Conic Hill rises straight out of Balmaha on the Highland Boundary Fault, the line where the Highlands meet the Lowlands; from the top the islands of Loch Lomond run away south-west in a chain that marks the same fault under the water. The West Highland Way climbs over it, and the boatyard at Balmaha runs a ferry across to Inchcailloch and, in summer, the mail boat round the inhabited islands.

Balmaha and Conic Hill: The Highland Boundary Fault

Loch Lomond

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

Kayak from Balmaha out among the islands of Loch Lomond, Britain's largest lake by surface area at 71km² and holding more than 30 islands

Paddle to Inchmurrin, the largest fresh-water island in the British Isles

Land on Inchcailloch, the wooded island nature reserve just off Balmaha

Loch Lomond is the largest lake in Britain by surface area, 71 square kilometres, with more than 30 islands, and the best way into them is by kayak from Balmaha on the eastern shore. Inchcailloch, just offshore, is a wooded island nature reserve; further south, Inchmurrin is the largest freshwater island in the British Isles.

Loch Lomond by Kayak: Inchcailloch and Inchmurrin

Climb Ben Lomond (974m), the southernmost Munro, by the tourist path from Rowardennan

Look south from the summit down Loch Lomond towards its islands

Ben Lomond, 974m, is the most southerly of the Munros and one of the most climbed, by about 30,000 people a year. It stands on the east shore of Loch Lomond within the Ben Lomond National Memorial Park, owned by the National Trust for Scotland. The usual way up is the wide tourist path from Rowardennan; the Ptarmigan ridge to the west makes the better descent.

Ben Lomond: The Southernmost Munro

Tour Glengoyne Distillery, distilling here since 1833

From the distillery side of the A81, look across to the warehouses and work out which side of the Highland Line each is on

Climb Dumgoyne, the volcanic plug above the distillery

Look back from the top over Glasgow and the Lowlands

Glengoyne has been distilling at Dumgoyne, north of Glasgow, since 1833, when it was called Burnfoot, and it sits exactly on the Highland Line: the stills are in the Highlands and the casks mature across the road in the Lowlands, so it makes a Highland malt matured in the Lowlands. Behind it rises Dumgoyne, a volcanic plug 427m high at the end of the Campsie Fells, reached by a path beside the distillery.

Glengoyne: The Distillery on the Highland Line

Cruise Loch Katrine on the steamship Sir Walter Scott, in service since 1900, on the loch that Sir Walter Scott set his poem The Lady of the Lake beside in 1810

Climb Ben A'an (454m) from the car park on Loch Achray for the view over the Trossachs

Walk part of the Loch Katrine shore path from Trossachs Pier, inside Scotland's first national park, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs, created in 2002

Loch Katrine is where Sir Walter Scott set The Lady of the Lake in 1810, and the steamship named after him has sailed it since 1900. Above Loch Achray, Ben A'an is only 454m but looks over the whole of the Trossachs. It all lies in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs, Scotland's first national park, created in 2002.

The Trossachs: Loch Katrine and Ben A'an

Start at the West Highland Way's obelisk in Milngavie, where Scotland's first official long-distance route begins

Walk out through Mugdock Country Park on the first miles of the Way

Follow the old Blane Valley railway line north

Look up at the Campsie Fells from the Way

The West Highland Way starts at the obelisk in Milngavie, Scotland's first official long-distance footpath, and the first day runs out of the suburbs into Mugdock and along the old Blane Valley railway to Drymen — flat, easy walking that gets the Campsie Fells into view.

The West Highland Way: Milngavie to Drymen

Stop at the Rest and Be Thankful and find the inscribed stone that gave the pass its name

Look down Glen Croe at the line of the old military road

Walk a stretch of the old military road below the pass

At the head of Glen Croe the A83 reaches the pass the soldiers who built the military road in the 1740s named the Rest and Be Thankful — a stone inscribed with the words was set up around 1749. The old road still runs below the new one; it was a motor-racing hillclimb until 1970 and is now the diversion route when landslides shut the A83, and the slope above is so prone to them that the road is regularly closed.

The Rest and Be Thankful: Glen Croe and the Old Military Road

Walk the nave of Jedburgh Abbey and look up at the rose window in the west gable

Visit Mary Queen of Scots' Visitor Centre and the story of her 1566 illness

See Jedburgh Castle Jail on the old castle site

David I raised Jedburgh for Augustinian canons in the 12th century and its great church stands almost complete, the rose window in the west gable still there after centuries of border war. In the town, the 16th-century tower house where Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have lain ill for weeks in 1566, after riding to Hermitage and back, is now a museum of her life.

Jedburgh: The Abbey and Mary's House

Walk down through the Bronze Age smithy, the broch and the Norse longhouse

Go inside a wheelhouse with its stone piers standing

Find the Norse longhouses and the later laird's house

Look across to the lighthouse on Sumburgh Head, and from April to mid-August look for puffins on its cliffs

A storm in the late 19th century washed away part of the shore at Sumburgh and revealed a site that had been built on again and again: a Bronze Age smithy, an Iron Age broch and roundhouses, a complex of Pictish wheelhouses, a Viking longhouse and a medieval farmhouse, with the laird's house on top. Walter Scott visited in 1814 and invented the name Jarlshof, 'Earl's Mansion', for his 1821 novel; excavation proved the Norse settlement more than a century later.