Lonach Highland Gathering
The March of the Lonach Highlanders, kilted men with pikes walking the glen, precedes a day of games at Strathdon.
A deeply remote Upper Donside settlement whose draw is landscape and occasion rather than amenity: the Lonach Highland Games, a brace of scheduled castles, and the Cairngorms on the doorstep do the heavy lifting, but visitors expecting a village with multiple open businesses will find the reality sparse.
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"The Royal Deeside market town of Banchory hosts its agricultural show each August at the gateway to the Cairngorms, where Aberdeenshire beef and Highland cattle are judged against a backdrop of the Forest of Birse and the River Dee shining in the valley below."
Banchory Show
"One of Scotland's most distinctive gatherings, the Lonach sees kilted clansmen march twelve miles carrying pikes before the Highland Games begin at Bellabeg in the upper Don valley."
Lonach Highland and Friendly Society Gathering
"The most famous of the Highland games, with tossing the caber, hill races and massed pipe bands, often attended by royalty."
Braemar Gathering
"Four days of Aberdeenshire artisan food producers, local folk musicians and community spirit in a Royal Deeside village, where the September apple harvest season and the warmth of a rural Scottish gathering make for an unusually nourishing weekend."
Tarland Food and Music Festival
"The Royal Deeside village that sits at the foot of the hills above Balmoral holds its Christmas market each December in a setting in the Cairngorms National Park that very few other Christmas markets anywhere in Britain can match for sheer backdrop."
Ballater Christmas Market
"At Hogmanay locals swing flaming wire cages of fire over their heads down the High Street to burn away the old year."
Stonehaven Fireball Ceremony
"Market Park in the town that was once the largest cattle market in Scotland and the southern end of the drove roads from the Highlands hosts its gathering each August, where the Knock hill rises above the ground and the games feel rooted in a landscape that shaped the character of the entire Highland cattle trade."
Crieff Highland Gathering
"The Haugh at Forter in remote Glenisla holds its games in a glen where the only road is single track, the mobile phone signal is unreliable and the audience has come from the farms and shooting estates of Angus rather than from any tourist trail, making it one of the most authentic Highland gatherings anywhere."
Glenisla Highland Games
"Blairbeg Park in Drumnadrochit holds its games with Loch Ness stretching south toward the Great Glen and Urquhart Castle ruins visible from the throwing circle, a combination of Highland athletics and legendary scenery that no other games ground in Scotland can match."
Glenurquhart Highland Games
"Set at Inverlochy Castle Farm in the shadow of Ben Nevis, this West Highland agricultural show and family fun day celebrates the farming traditions of Lochaber with livestock and countryside displays."
Lochaber Agricultural Show
"The largest Highland games in the world, closing with a torchlit march of massed pipe bands through Dunoon."
Cowal Highland Gathering
"A cherished one-day agricultural show in the spa town of Moffat in the Southern Uplands, celebrating hill farming traditions and Dumfries and Galloway livestock with a strong local community spirit."
Moffat Show