Geography of the Scottish Highlands The Highlands are wild and picturesque. Their rocky, barren summits were chiselled by glaciers and the rainfall of many centuries. Purple heather clothes the lower slopes in late summer. The valleys are usually steep-sided glens, with a long, narrow loch at the bottom.

Scottish Highlands, major physiographic and cultural division of Scotland, lying northwest of a line drawn from Dumbarton, near the head of the Firth of Clyde on the western coast, to Stonehaven, on the eastern coast. The western offshore islands of the Inner and Outer Hebrides and Arran and Bute are sometimes included in the division.

The geography of the Highlands is also diverse ranging from fertile farmland around the Black Isle and Cromarty Firth; dramatic seascapes on the west and north coasts; some of the tallest mountains in the British Isles (including the tallest, Ben Nevis, Lochaber); and the largest blanket bog in Europe (Flow country, Sutherland).

1. Three languages are spoken in the Highlands: English, Scots and Gaelic 2. The area is divided in two parts: the Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the northwest Highlands 3. It has the UK’s highest mountains, ranging from 900-1300m 4. The north west Highlands are, geologically speaking, 750 million years old