Touring Scotland - The Lowlands And Highlands

Pack a thermos, set your weather to “changeable,” and practise pronouncing “bruichladdich” without spraining a vowel. Touring Scotland – The Lowlands and Highlands (1980) by Letts Guide (published by Charles Letts) is the glove-box whisperer that turns a map into mischief. It’s the optimistic pocket marshal who believes you can visit a ruined abbey, a working distillery, a suspiciously vertical hill, and still find a pie before closing. Spoiler: you can, provided you read the small print and respect the sheep.

This is Scotland presented with cheerful precision: routes that thread glens like needles, side trips that wink at history, and mini-gazetteers that know exactly which stone circle wants you to stop and admire it in light drizzle. The Lowlands get their moment—burghs that mind their manners, coastlines with unexpected adjectives, rail towns that invented civilisation one timetable at a time—while the Highlands go full cinema: sea lochs muttering in Gaelic, single-track roads performing social experiments, mountains that prefer you small and well-layered.

Expect within:

• Itineraries that behave: mileages, timings, and those cunning “if time allows” detours that always do.

• Place notes with personality: castles that brood, kirks that preach to the wind, gardens that carry on as if the Gulf Stream were a personal valet.

• Practicalities with panache: ferries that keep their promises (weather permitting), petrol that appears exactly when you begin to pray, and accommodation advice pitched between thrift and charm.

• History in digestible slices: Picts, Covenanters, Jacobites—everyone gets a paragraph and none overstays.

• Landscape etiquette: how to pass politely on a passing place, greet midges with stoic courtesy, and never argue with a stag.

The Letts tone is brisk, unfussy, and faintly encouraging—like a head teacher who secretly loves a half-day. It trusts your curiosity, keeps your schedule honest, and whispers the vital aside (“turn left after the third beech; if you reach the tractor, you’ve gone too far”). Suddenly you’re not lost; you’re touring, which is lost with documentation.

Why this copy? It arrives from the gloriously plain-spoken emporium Crappy Old Books in Condition: Good—translation: sound binding, clean pages, a hint of honest shelf-ramble. The sort of guide that’s been opened on a bonnet in a brisk wind, survived, and now sits ready for another campaign. Not pristine; perfectly roadworthy.

Vital stats for your glove-box log:

• Title: Touring Scotland – The Lowlands and Highlands

• Author/Series: Letts Guide

• Publisher: Charles Letts, 1980

• ISBN: 0850974402

• Condition: Good (crisp, navigable, drizzle-tolerant)

• Vendor: Crappy Old Books—the name shrugs; the stock keeps to the left.

Buy it for the routes; keep it for the voice—that kindly, canny nudge that turns a scenic drive into a small expedition. After a few pages you’ll start factoring in tides, measuring distances in bridges, and identifying cloud types by whether they improve a photograph of a broch. Scotland will still be vast, mercurial, and slightly amused by your plans; this little Letts will make sure those plans end with soup, a view, and a story you didn’t expect to collect at a passing place.

Keep browsing: See more Travel books Other books by Letts Guide