Scotland Habitat Guide

The world famous Scottish highlands which you are bound to fall instantly in love with are one of the most beautiful and unspolit regions remaining in Europe today. Punctuated with legendary lakes such as the Loch Ness and precipitous peaks, swift streams and dense thickets, the highlands consist of a parallel system of mountains cut across by valleys and ravines. The highlands take up more than half of the Scottish landscape.

However, the Scottish landscape is not limited to the rugged grandeur of the highlands. South of the highlands are the Grampian mountains – the only continuous mountain range in Scotland, which also contain the highest summit in all of the British isles.

It is the Grampians that form the natural division between the Highlands and the Central Lowlands – which is a relatively small region in comparison but contains majority of the population. Further down one will find the moorland plateaus of the Southern Uplands which are traversed by valleys and form the barrier with England.

The lakes (or "lochs") and streams of Scotland, as already mentioned, are world famous. These include the Loch Ness, the Loch Lomond, and Loch Tay – which are not only some of the clearest and most breathtaking water bodies in the region but also carry with them a good deal of Scottish folklore and myth. The longest river in Scotland is the Tay, followed in size by the Tweed and the Dee.