On the Road in Scotland 

Picture a cozy holiday in the Scottish countryside and you’re probably conjuring tartan and tweed. But photographer Alex Baxter and design writer Banjo Beale had a hunch about an exciting shift happening in Scottish style, a “new confidence” from inspiring voices across the design spectrum, which they beautifully capture in their just-published book, A Place in Scotland (Quadrille). The friends spent about two months on the road, crisscrossing the country. Rather than finding one cohesive modern Scottish design voice, however, “what we found was something a lot more diverse, a huge spectrum of culture and craft,” Alex says. The diversity of interiors runs the gamut, from an industrial-chic former RAF control tower to a monastically minimalist Highlands castle. Luckily, many of these structures can be slept in – as hotels or rentals. Alex designed a couple of itineraries for us to be able to catch a few highlights. —Alex Postman, YOLO deputy editor

I find it’s best to think of Scotland as one quite large and very sparse village. Visitors will want to start off in Edinburgh—as they should—but Scotland’s real gems are all found out in the countryside. Here, plucky entrepreneurs are working their socks off to transform what was once a very tired travel experience into growing clusters of outstanding rural businesses, set within some of Europe’s last remaining wild landscapes. 

What follows is a small list of some of my very favorite places to eat, stay, and wander, which I’ve accumulated while living in both Edinburgh and more rural parts. 

I’ve divided this list into three parts: an Edinburgh sojourn, a darling little road trip, and a Highland fling. My list is very much a skeleton—there will be any number of great wee pubs, cute shops, and breathtaking scenes along the way. However you navigate these places, I invite you to linger a little longer than you might otherwise—Scotland can be full of unexpected surprises, and rewards the wanderer in spades