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

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 shore at Tighnabruaich, the village on the Kyles of Bute whose pier, probably first built in the 1830s and rebuilt in 1885, served paddle steamers and Clyde puffers

Sail or boat the Kyles of Bute, the narrow channel between Bute and Cowal

Take the ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert to continue to Kintyre

Cycle part of National Cycle Route 75, which runs from Edinburgh to Tarbert through the village

Tighnabruaich is a sailing village on the Kyles of Bute, the narrow channel between Bute and Cowal; its pier, probably first built in the 1830s and rebuilt in 1885, served paddle steamers and Clyde puffers. National Cycle Route 75 runs through the village, and from Portavadie a ferry crosses Loch Fyne to Tarbert.

Tighnabruaich and the Kyles of Bute

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

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

Climb the Paps of Jura, the three quartzite mountains Beinn an Òir (785m), Beinn Shiantaidh (757m) and Beinn a' Chaolais (733m), visible from the Mull of Kintyre and, on a clear day, from Skye

Look for red deer, which far outnumber the roughly 250 people of the island

Run or watch the Isle of Jura Fell Race in May

The Paps of Jura are three quartzite mountains — Beinn an Òir, 785m, Beinn Shiantaidh, 757m, and Beinn a' Chaolais, 733m — seen from the Mull of Kintyre and, on a clear day, from Skye. Jura has about 250 people and far more red deer, and every May the Isle of Jura Fell Race goes over the Paps.

Paps of Jura Hill Walk

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.

Benmore Botanic Garden and the Argyll Forest Park

Eat a proper crimped Cornish pasty in the tin-mining country

Check it is the real thing: beef, potato, swede and onion with salt and pepper, in a D shape crimped along the side

Find the engine houses of the mining landscape around Redruth

Try it both ways: held by the crimp, as the story says, and end to end from the bag, 'the true Cornish way' according to the first Cornish recipe book

A real Cornish pasty is beef, potato, swede and onion with a light seasoning of salt and pepper, in a D-shaped pastry crimped along the side and made in Cornwall, and since 20 July 2011 the name has been protected in law — the result of a nine-year campaign by the Cornish Pasty Association, about fifty makers based in Cornwall. It became the working food of the tin miners of Cornwall and west Devon in the 17th and 18th centuries because the shape made a whole meal you could carry, and the story goes that the thick crimped edge was the handle a miner held and then threw away, so that fingers carrying traces of arsenic never touched the food.

The Cornish Pasty: Tin Country and a Protected Name

Walk the pinewoods and find the red squirrels

Look for prehistoric footprints exposed in the beach silts

Walk the dunes and listen for natterjack toads in spring

Follow the paths through the dunes to the beach for the view over the Irish Sea

The National Trust looks after the pinewoods and dunes at Formby Point, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of several places in Britain where red squirrels still survive, alongside natterjack toads in the dune slacks. The beach itself keeps something older: layers of silt that hold the footprints of people and of red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wolf and aurochs. In June 2016 more than fifty human footprints around 7,000 years old were uncovered here.