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The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Scottish estate steeped in clan history put up for sale
Armadale Castle Estate on the Isle of Skye is centred around the dramatic ruins of a 19th century Gothic mansion. It is being marketed for sale by Strutt & Parker at offers over £2.76 million as a whole, or in seven lots. Robert McCulloch, Strutt & Parker's head of estate and farm agency in Scotland, said: "Armadale is a place of rare character and heritage. "It has the grandeur: the ruined turrets, the ancient trees, the views that stretch across the Sound of Sleat - but is also one of the Isle of Skye's most established and internationally recognised tourist attraction and associated businesses." The estate from above. (Image: Strutt & Parker) The castle, which forms the centrepiece of the estate, is the historic seat of the Macdonalds of Sleat, "one of the largest and most powerful of the Highland clans historically". The first recorded reference to a house at Armadale is from 1690, when the Royal Navy shelled the site to bring the Jacobite Sir Donald Macdonald of Sleat to heel. A new mansion was constructed in the 1790s, with a grand Tudor-Gothic wing added in 1815 by James Gillespie Graham. Today, the estate is operated by a charitable trust as a well-established visitor destination, welcoming thousands of visitors each year. It includes a purpose-built visitor centre, which houses the Museum of the Isles, together with the former stable block which includes a pair of self-contained apartments, café/restaurant which can be used as 'well-appointed venue for functions and events, and associated offices and utilitarian space'. The agent said: 'This is complemented by Armadale Gardens, which extends to around 40 acres of formal Victorian planting with specimen trees and rare conifers laid out across terraces and wooded walks. 'The wider estate includes Armadale House, a secluded period five-bedroom family-sized home and former head gardener's house; the converted Stables used for accommodation and hospitality; and Forester's Cottage, tucked among the trees, and six self-catering cabins with spectacular sea views. 'The land itself totals approximately 359 acres combining mixed species woodland and enclosed pasture on a gently sloping ground with a southeasterly aspect and magnificent views." The agent added "In addition to Armadale Castle Estate, the adjoining South Sleat Estate – extending to over 19,000 acres and also owned by the Clan Donald Lands Trust is for sale at offers over £6.75m. A further cottage with development land is available for sale as an addition to Armadale Castle or South Sleat estates. The availability for sale of these estates offers purchasers of wide range and varying budget a fantastic opportunity to own either a small or a large part of the famous Isle of Skye, and contribute positively to the future of the region's land and community." Separately, Community Land Scotland earlier called for further consultation over the sale. Scottish business which worked on Liverpool's Anfield eyes growth One of Scotland's largest structural steel fabricators, which has worked on projects including the redevelopment of Glasgow Queen Street railway station and Liverpool FC's Anfield stadium, is gearing up for major expansion as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. J&D Pierce Contracts, based at Glengarnock in Ayrshire and 80%-owned by Swedish investment group Storskogen, expects annual turnover to rise towards £200 million as it capitalises on 'growth in key sectors including data centres, distribution hubs, distilleries, stadia and arenas, transport infrastructure, and the social and supply chain requirements related to renewable energy'. Accounts filed with Companies House last July show the turnover of J&D Pierce Contracts was £103.8 million in the year to December 31, 2023. In recent years, J&D Pierce has supplied structural steel for high-profile construction projects across the UK, including at the Formula One racetrack at Silverstone as well as Anfield. It has also worked on the redevelopment of Edinburgh Haymarket and Dundee railway stations, as well as on the Queen Street project. Family sells renowned landmark hotel after 30 years A large-scale landmark hotel and 'cherished destination' has been sold.
Daily Record
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Scottish city is home to one of the most popular place for a walk this summer, according to TikTok
Scotland ranks three times in the UK's top ten walks as TikTok's 'hot girl walk' trend booms Scotland has claimed three spots in a new top ten list of the UK's most popular walks, as the viral TikTok trend known as the 'hot girl walk' continues to sweep the nation just in time for summer. Searches for 'hot girl walk' have skyrocketed by 529 percent in the past month alone, as more and more people look to embrace the feel-good trend now the sun is out and the days are longer. Despite the name, the trend isn't just for girls, it encourages anyone to head out for a four-mile stroll, while listening to motivational podcasts or repeating positive affirmations. Car leasing experts at Nationwide Vehicle Contracts have analysed trending TikTok searches to reveal the most in-demand walks for summer 2025, and three Scottish trails have made the cut, proving that the country's scenic walking spots are just as popular online as they are in real life. Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh was the highest ranked Scottish entry, coming in at number four overall. With its sweeping 360-degree views over the city, it's no surprise the extinct volcano is a magnet for both tourists and locals. TikTok searches for Arthur's Seat have hit 106,000 in the UK, with users sharing everything from sunrise selfies to peaceful sunset strolls. Its central location and ample parking near Holyrood Palace and Meadowbank make it an easy option for a spontaneous day trip into the capital. Meanwhile, the Glenfinnan Viaduct Trail in the Highlands secured tenth place with 38,700 TikTok searches. Best known for its appearance in the Harry Potter films, the iconic viaduct draws visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the Jacobite steam train as it crosses the bridge. The trail also extends beyond the photo spot, offering a rewarding countryside hike through a picturesque Highland valley. Rounding out Scotland's top entries was Ben A'an in the Trossachs, which remains a favourite for those after a shorter hike with spectacular views. Its compact climb offers a powerful sense of achievement with stunning panoramic scenery at the summit, ideal for reflection and that all-important affirmation time. Urban walks near major cities also ranked highly, with Richmond Park in London topping the overall list thanks to its 192,000 TikTok searches. The leafy seven-mile loop is popular with Londoners looking to escape the bustle without leaving the city limits, and there are plenty of shorter three to four-mile routes on offer too. The park is well-equipped with cafes, toilet facilities and parking across several locations. How to get the latest Euro 2024 news from Record Sport At Record Sport, you can guarantee we'll be working tirelessly throughout Euro 2024, keeping you up to date as we cheer on our boys. There are many ways you can follow along with our coverage: Check out our Hotline podcast We will be putting out new episodes every week day, hearing from our reporters on location in Munich and beyond, discussing how Scotland are faring in the tournament, and more. Got a burning question for our Hotline team? Simply leave it in the comments and we'll pick up the best ones. Join our Scotland at Euro 2024 WhatsApp community You'll receive daily updates and breaking news alerts straight to your mobile phone. Simply click here or scan the QR code above to join. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Cheer on the Scotland National Team with our interactive map Leave a message of support for our boys on our Euro 2024 cheer map. Subscribe to the Record Sport newsletter Follow us on X, Facebook and Instagram Further south, countryside gems like Malham Cove in Yorkshire, Pen y Fan in Wales, and Box Hill in Surrey also made the top ten, blending hiking challenge with striking natural beauty. As the summer solstice approaches on 21 June, the longest day of the year, the timing couldn't be better to head outdoors. Whether it's the pull of a Harry Potter view or simply a moment of quiet positivity, the hot girl walk offers something deeper than just a trending hashtag. 'A hot girl walk is more than just a walk,' researchers noted. 'Walking provides many physical benefits, and the act of positive affirmations encourages a mental well-being boost.' All ten walks listed in the ranking offer accessible parking, making them ideal for a day trip by car. The 10 most popular UK walks according to TikTok Rank Walk Location Walk Length Parking Available TikTok Search Volume 1 Richmond Park Circular London 7 miles (can be shortened to 3–4 miles) Yes 192,000 2 Seven Sisters Cliff Walk East Sussex 3 miles Yes 157,000 3 Durdle Door to Lulworth Cove Dorset 2.5 miles Yes 129,000 4 Arthur's Seat via Salisbury Crags Edinburgh 2.5 miles Yes 106,000 5 Calton Hill Edinburgh 1 mile Yes 70,300 6= Malham Cove Walk Yorkshire Dales 2 miles Yes 47,300 6= Hadrian's Wall – Sycamore Gap Walk London 3 miles Yes 47,300 6= Pen y Fan via the Storey Arms Wales 4 miles Yes 47,300 10= Box Hill Stepping Stones Walk Surrey 2 miles Yes 38,700 10= Glenfinnan Viaduct Trail Scottish Highlands 2 miles Yes 38,700
BBC News
12-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Church with Jacobite links to become heritage centre
A historic church, which has links to the Battle of Culloden, could become a heritage centre under new Heritage Association took over the former Dunlichity Church last year and has secured a £40,000 grant from the Scottish group plans to further develop an archive about history of the area to the south of Inverness. Marks can be seen in walls in the church yard that are said to have been made by Jacobite soldiers sharpening their swords before Culloden in 1746. Strathnairn Heritage Association chairman, Alasdair Forbes, said it was keen to help people who wanted to trace family links to the area. He said: "We get a lot of people coming from abroad every summer."If we can bring them here we can show them the history behind where they came from." "We have a lot of information about the churches, the schools, Culloden all these sort of things. "We'll archive this and make it available for people to see."
Spectator
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
A.C. Benson enters the pantheon of great English diarists
All great diarists have something intensely silly about them: Boswell's and Pepys's periodic bursts of lechery and panic; Chips Channon's unrealistic dreams of political greatness leavened with breathless excitement over royal dukes and handsome boys; Alan Clark's fits of romantic, almost Jacobite, dreaming; James Lees-Milne's absurd flights of rage. I dare say the mania that drove the Duc de Saint-Simon in his demented campaign against Louis XIV's attempts to create a place in court hierarchy for his bastards seemed ridiculous to his more sober contemporaries. Often the silliness comes from a mad overestimation of the writer's ability. There is no more fascinating diary than Benjamin Haydon's. He was an indifferent painter who never achieved the success he dreamt of. But in every sentence of his diary it is apparent to us what he himself never realised: that, though a painter of mediocrity, he was a writer of genius. A.C. Benson, born in 1862, had the sense to make arrangements for his diary to be published after his death. The rest of his writing, with the possible exception of 'Land of Hope and Glory', pales to insignificance next to it. His published work is astonishingly bland. There is a screamingly funny parody of him by Max Beerbohm in A Christmas Garland: 'More and more, as the tranquil years went by, Percy found himself able to draw a quiet satisfaction from the regularity, the even sureness, with which, in every year, one season succeeded to another.' (Having read Benson's staggeringly tedious Watersprings, I can report that Beerbohm does not exaggerate.) The diary, on the other hand, stretching to more than four million words, is vivacious, beadily observed and takes advantage of Benson's position as a favourite of the great. In this beautifully edited two-volume selection by Eamon Duffy and Ronald Hyam we see what a well-placed diarist can do. Benson was an irregularity at the heart of Victorian society, guaranteed respectability by being the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury. That archbishop, however, had his odd aspects. He proposed to his wife when he was 23 and she was 11. When they married, it soon became apparent that she was lesbian in tendency. All six of their children were lesbian or homosexual, including Fred, the sunniest of them. (Georgie, in his Mapp and Lucia novels, must be a self-portrait.) Arthur was at the centre of things, a pillar of Eton and later Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Queen Victoria liked him well enough to invite him to a Frogmore mausoleum service in 1900, and he later edited her letters. He went everywhere, but the degree of his waspish indiscretion was only apparent in the diary. (One of his many curious observations was that Edward VII's heels 'project a long way behind his ankles'.) Cambridge University life was less demanding then than now. When Benson first arrived at Magdalene to lecture on English literature, it had only 33 students and four Fellows. He was, nevertheless, fantastically industrious, publishing more than 20 books by his early forties as well as writing the diary and as many as 40 letters every morning. Somehow this still left time for the business of getting out and paying close, sometimes unforgiving, attention to his world. There is no witness like him. One of the joys of the diary is its engagement with the trivial squabbles of Cambridge University One of the joys of the diary is its committed engagement with the trivial squabbles of Cambridge. In May 1914 a row erupted. The Fellows of Magdalene found that their garden had been colonised by the Master, who, without asking, had let his children keep their chickens in it. The dispute – 'this wretched business' – ran on for months, gloriously chronicled. When war broke out shortly afterwards, hostilities were on much the same scale. It's the dedication to the utterly insignificant, especially when Benson encounters celebrities, that gives the diary its special flavour. There is the visit to the elderly poet Swinburne, long withdrawn from society and living under the guardianship of Theodore Watts-Dunton. The eccentric household, unused to entertaining a guest, provides an unforgettable set piece. A pair of Swinburne's socks were draped over the fender in the drawing room: ''Stay!' said Swinburne, 'they are drying.' 'He seems to be changing them,' said W-D.' Certainly Benson was absurdly rapturous in important company. 'I forgot to say that a great and memorable moment was the bringing in of a glass of lemonade for the Queen.' But for the most part he saw things clearly. He was often in a position to record credible anecdotes at one remove – for instance, Mrs Gladstone irritating her husband on his deathbed by 'tripping into the room' and saying 'You're ever so much better', when Gladstone was set on striking noble final attitudes. The outbursts of judgment are often bizarre. The King of Portugal is 'a very common-looking young man'. Belloc and Chesterton 'really ought to be more ashamed of looking so common'. Many of Benson's confident dicta would have been considered stuffy even by Victorians: 'Women ought never to run on the stage. One is inclined to throw an orange at them.' But he would often give the benefit of the doubt to a truly beautiful young man. The diary becomes steadily more open about the pleasures of conversation with intimates such as the young George Mallory, the great mountaineer. Some people evidently noticed Benson's partiality; he was a sitting target for a slutty operative on the make like Hugh Walpole. What really elevates the diary is the vividness of the prose. Harry Cust (in a fantastical rumour sometimes said to be Mrs Thatcher's real grandfather) is 'a crumpled rose-leaf, singed gnat'. The aged Dean of St Paul's is 'like a lion's skin in a billiard room'. Writing like that lasts forever: and this wonderful, extensive selection is highly recommended. Duffy and Hyam have done a superb job in what is surely a labour of love. The footnotes are frequently a joy. One Master of St John's was 'a keen alpinist into his sixties, but so corpulent that his climbing companions refused to be roped to him in case his weight dragged them down a crevasse'. An Eton pupil, Sir Robert Filmer, 'who succeeded to his baronetcy at the age of eight, fought at the Sudanese Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898. He died in France of wounds received while retrieving his pince-nez from a trench'. Long acknowledged by archival explorers to be a great diarist, A.C. Benson has now been placed in the position where the rest of us can read him and concur. Silly as he was, and remote from commanding anything like agreement at any point, he enters the diarists' pantheon for readers to shake their heads over in perpetuity.
Scottish Sun
11-06-2025
- Scottish Sun
Scotland's best train routes for sightseeing revealed with rugged mountain views and enchanting glens
Scroll down to find out some of the best places to travel by train RAIL-Y GREAT Scotland's best train routes for sightseeing revealed with rugged mountain views and enchanting glens FROM rugged mountains to enchanting glens, one of the finest ways to experience Scotland's iconic beauty is by train. This summer, leave the car behind and immerse yourself in the breathtaking scenery that Scotland has to offer by booking a rail holiday instead of travelling by road. 5 The Glenfinnan Viaduct is one of the most iconic rail routes in the world Credit: Getty 5 Corrour Station is in the middle of the Rannoch Mour on the West Highland line Credit: Alamy 5 The Kyle of Lochalsh line is also equally breathtaking Credit: Alamy The top train holidays in Scotland for 2025-26 have been revealed by the travel planning site Holiday Scottish Highlands and Islands. Travel experts have selected three of the best routes, celebrated for their stunning scenery, rich history, and exciting activities along the way. Scotland's vibrant rail network, established during the Victorian era, provides bucket-list experiences such as the West Highland Line, which meanders through some of the most remote and awe-inspiring landscapes. Offering spectacular views of Loch Lomond, Rannoch Moor, and Ben Nevis, this route is considered one of the finest in the world. Reaching iconic landmarks like the Glenfinnan Viaduct, completed in 1901 and towering above Loch Shiel, has elevated scenic rail travel to international fame, bolstered by its appearance in the Harry Potter films. The first featured journey is a trip on the Jacobite steam train, crossing the famous arched bridge from the Hogwarts Express scene. Departing from Glasgow along the West Highland Line, this six-day tour takes visitors into the heart of the northwest Highlands, with stops at Loch Lomond, the historic town of Inveraray, and a ferry crossing from Oban to Mull. The second dream itinerary is the Hogwarts route, which begins and ends in London. This self-guided seven-day ScotRail trip includes several days in Inverness and Fort William, a journey to the fishing village of Mallaig via the iconic 21-arched viaduct, and a magical return on the Caledonian Sleeper. The third listed journey is the nine-day Edinburgh, Highlands & Islands tour, which traverses both the West Highland and Kyle railway lines, two of Scotland's most scenic routes. Inside Europe's highest capital city with no airports or train stations - but welcomes EIGHT MILLION tourists a year Blending standard and heritage rail, this trip includes excursions to Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, a relaxing cruise on Loch Linnhe and Loch Ness, and concludes with a grand Scottish banquet in Edinburgh, complete with pipers and dancing. The Holiday Scottish Highlands & Islands website describes these trips as "a rail traveller's dream, offering a blend of history, culture, and wild Highland beauty. "Scotland by rail holidays take you past ancient castles, shimmering lochs, and rugged glens—all without the hassle of driving. Here's your ultimate guide to planning the perfect Scotland rail holiday." Further details can be found on the Holiday Scottish Highlands & Islands website. 5 One of the trips is self-guided via ScotRail services Credit: Alamy
