Helensburgh and Loch Lomond Highland Games

"One of Scotland's oldest music festivals brings Gaelic nights, ceilidhs, pipe bands and distillery tours to a remote Kintyre town at the road's very end."

Mull of Kintyre Music Festival

"Heavy events, wrestling and a 10K road race come to The Stadium in the genteel Victorian island resort of Rothesay."

Bute Highland Games

"The Argyllshire Gathering at Mossfield Stadium in Oban is the premier Games event of the west coast, featuring a ceremonial parade from Station Square and first-class piping and heavy athletics."

Argyllshire Gathering (Oban Highland Games)

"The largest Highland games in the world, closing with a torchlit march of massed pipe bands through Dunoon."

Cowal Highland Gathering

"Held alongside the Cowal Highland Gathering, the Cowal Fringe fills Dunoon's streets and gardens with additional performances, street arts and local entertainment celebrating the broader artistic life of this Firth of Clyde town."

Cowal Fringe Festival

"On Easdale Island, accessible only by foot ferry, competitors skim slates across a flooded quarry pool on the last Saturday of summer, in the world's only skimming championship held on a Scottish island with no cars and a population of around 60."

World Stone Skimming Championships

"Traigh Farm near Arisaig holds its games with the Small Isles of Eigg, Rum and Muck shining on the horizon across the blue Sound of Arisaig, a location so extravagantly beautiful that the athletic results become almost secondary to the experience of simply being there."

Arisaig Highland Games

"Heavy events, highland dancing and pipe bands on Aboyne Green in a long-running Deeside gathering."

Aboyne Highland Games

"The elegant planned town of Grantown-on-Spey in the upper Spey valley holds its annual agricultural show in August when the moors above are a week from flowering, a show that gathers the farms of Strathspey and Badenoch together for a day of livestock judging and country sports in the heart of the Cairngorms."

Grantown Show

"The northernmost Highland games in Scotland, held near John o' Groats in the lee of the Castle of Mey that the Queen Mother loved, where the Orkney Islands are visible across the Pentland Firth and the wind rarely stops long enough for the caber to fall straight."

Mey Highland Games

"The Eilan at Newtonmore in the Spey Valley hosts this village games where Badenoch and Strathspey meet, the shinty-playing heartland of the Highlands where the heavy events are contested with a seriousness and local knowledge that puts the big tourist-facing games firmly in perspective."

Newtonmore Highland Games

"Games Park in this Victorian spa village on the foot of the Ochil Hills has hosted Highland games since 1861, one of the oldest continuously running games in the world, held in a village that Victorian visitors came to for its mineral springs and where the air still seems clearer than the surrounding Forth valley."

Bridge of Allan Highland Games