The Scot emerged from behind the bar wearing a kilt and heavy leather boots, his legs clearly strong beneath woollen socks.

Flashes, partly decorative and partly practical, hold up his socks and reflect the tartan of his choice. Or heritage. In earlier times he could have presented a menacing attitude to a foreigner like me. Today, however, he has just poured me a beer and brings it to my table at the Inn on the slopes above Loch Ness.

A stag’s head is mounted on the wall beside me, looking as if he were alive. Staring into the middle distance, with eyes bright and antlers sharp, he appears eager for the heather.

I drink from my glass, savouring the Scottish black beer. Stout black beer must have Celtic origins. The two countries that produce the best stout, Scotland and Ireland, have Celtic history. I join the stag in appreciative silence.

I had arrived earlier that afternoon at Inverness, one of Scotland’s most northerly cities situated where Loch Ness meets the North Sea. This is Highland country. I had driven past the Culloden battlefield on my way to the Inn. The battle proved a crushing defeat for the Jacobite forces of the Scots, particularly the Highlanders, resisting the English. It was 1746. The Act of the Union, establishing the United Kingdom, was less than 50 years old. Several earlier rebellions had been attempted. What happened at Culloden was the final attempt. The Jacobites were crushed and their wounded survivors were butchered. It remains the last battle fought on land in Scotland. Or England, for that matter. The Highlanders and their clans were routed and never recovered.

The waters of Loch Ness are black with depth. A long narrow loch, it cleaves the highlands. In the early 1800s, the waters of Loch Ness were linked to several others in a south west alignment along the Great Glen by a system of canals. It became known as the Caledonian Canal. It is a navigable waterway from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. Its primary purpose was to create a shortcut for British ships fighting the Napoleonic Wars. In the end, the Wars were over before the Canal was finished. Yet it operates today for commercial and recreational boating. I watch yachts traversing the canal, through a system of locks in some places. I see yachts with French flags going through, no doubt their owners being appreciative of the Canal, while mindful of its original purpose, and paying Canal fees in pounds sterling, not francs or that currency abomination the Euro.

Scrabbling up a hill on the Isle of Skye, I wonder how an island can produce a wet and soft peat bog right up to the rocky cliff edge high above the Irish Sea. I’m tentative on the cliff edge in the way a goat wouldn’t be. This is remote. Skye is part of the Inner Hebrides, an extension of the Highlands. The granite mountains are immense and treeless. I draw back from the edge and find a way through a peat gully, getting wetter from below than from above. Several highland cows watch me, mildly curious.

Travel around the western Scottish islands is facilitated by ferries. As I queue my car at Oban to board a ferry for Mull, the rain is setting in. The men working the ferries seem used to it. I open my window marginally and post my ticket out to the man with the ticket scanner. I imagine my nervousness in the vicinity of rain marks me as a foreigner. In Scotland, nobody goes anywhere without a rain jacket, even in July. Locals carry or wear jackets all the time. Ferry workers are in heavy duty foul weather gear. Australian tourists arrive as if for a day at the cricket.

The sunlight flashes across an island and turns the grass bright green. The hole in the passing cloud then closes and the isle turns grey again. The light changes almost constantly with the passing sky. Small white houses dot the landscape, appearing brighter in a sunbeam, returning to grey under cloud. The isle of Jura is nearby across the water. George Orwell moved to Jura in 1949 for the solitude necessary during his terminal illness to finish his final novel, 1984. Orwell’s cottage remains and attracts many visitors, even today. I imagine that the winter days at Jura must have been arduous but perhaps that assisted him.

The Outer Hebrides are visible across the strait. They form a protective barrier against the North Atlantic. Mendelssohn composed his Scottish symphony here, with the overture given the Hebrides name. Listen to that overture and it can only have been composed when exposed to the western shores of the Outer Hebrides. The Inner Hebrides are quieter, more suited to long summer evenings tasting peaty malt whisky.

The thin ribbon road cuts the Skye hills near the waterline following the ins and outs of the coastline. Scottish engineering is on display. The Caledonian Canal, the James Watt steam engine, annuities for Scottish Widows and a road system on the Isle of Skye all remind me of the scientific heritage of the Scots. I return to the mainland and by yet another thin road following the banks of Loch Lomond, I travel to Glasgow in readiness to end this Scottish interlude.