Destination: BRITAIN
Things To Know Britain Explained A Diverse Unity Village Greens and Seaside From Oxford to the Lakes Wild Wales North to the Highlands Seeing the Country The Taste of Britain Protected by Sea	North to the Highlands North of Cumbria and Northumber-land, the Southern Uplands guard Scotland's borderland, once infamous for its violent robber clans. It was this raw border country that gave courage to heroic Scottish patriots like Robert Bruce and William Wallace as they pitted themselves against England's might. And across these hills in 1745 marched Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie, the last of a moribund royal line - supported by the cream of the Highland clans in a doomed final gesture of defiance by Scotland against English domination. North of the Southern Uplands are the Central Lowlands of Scotland, with the capital city of Edinburgh to the east and Glasgow, the great powerhouse of old industrial Scotland, to the west. Edinburgh is the historic distillation of all things Scottish, the political and cultural focus of the nation from a time when poet Robert Burns and novelist Walter Scott graced fashionable 18th-century salons, to the vigorous and progressive Edinburgh Festival of today. Across the Forth river (Firth of Forth) from Edinburgh lies the region of Fife, often referred to as the “Kingdom of Fife,” home to the university town and golfing mecca of St. Andrews. To the north and west are the Scottish Highlands, Britain's most dramatic landscape, and some of the last great wilderness areas of Europe. At the edge of the Highlands are the Trossachs, Scotland's equivalent to England's Lake District, steeped in the history of real-life characters like Rob Roy Macgregor, inspiration for the classic novels of Sir Walter Scott. Farther north are the mountains of Aberdeenshire. Here, on Royal Deeside, sits Balmoral Castle, traditional retreat of the Queen and her family. Scotland's most spectacular mountain country lies to the far west and north, at the Pass of Glen Coe, and then for more than 100 miles northward along the west coast to Kintail and Wester Ross. Out to sea is the Isle of Skye and the misty Hebrides, romantic islands at Britain's far western edge.	COUNTRY Introduction Things To Know Survival Guide TimeLine Essential Info REGION CITIES London Edinburgh Oxford York MAPS World Europe TRAVEL BOOK