Markinch Highland Games
John Dixon Park in this Fife village hosts its Highland games on the Sunday after Scotland's schools break for summer, a community gathering of pipe bands, athletic competition and Highland dancing that has been running here for generations.
Markinch rewards a stop for its striking Norman-towered church and its useful mainline station, but the village itself is modest and working, not a showpiece destination.
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"Over 180 artists open front rooms, garages, sheds and gardens in this East Neuk fishing village for eight August days, turning Pittenweem's harbourside streets into the most personal and intimate art festival in Scotland."
Pittenweem Arts Festival
"A two-day arts, crafts and local produce fayre in the historic East Neuk fishing village of Crail, drawing makers and community together in the Community Hall each late November with free entry and a choir performance."
Crail Christmas Fayre
"Birthplace of the Scottish Snowdrop Festival, Cambo Estate holds the Plant Heritage national collection of over 200 specialist snowdrop varieties carpeting 70 acres of woodland walks down to the Fife coast."
Cambo Estate Snowdrop Festival
"The oldest free Highland games in Scotland, held by royal charter every year since 1314 in honour of the Ceres men who marched home from Bannockburn."
Ceres Highland Games
"The fishing villages of the East Neuk of Fife host one of Scotland's finest chamber music festivals each July, with world-class ensembles playing in village halls, old granaries and stone-vaulted churches a few yards from the North Sea, where lobster creels are stacked outside and the smell of the harbour drifts through the open doors."
East Neuk Festival
"Station Park in the home of golf hosts Highland games the day after the traditional July weekend, a gathering of pipe bands and athletes in a small city that trades more in history and ceremony than almost anywhere else in Scotland."
St Andrews Highland Games
"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