Discovering Scotland's Handmade Clothes - Articles - Travel + Leisure

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When to Go

Spring and fall are the most pleasant months in the U.K., and are best for driving excursions.

Fly to London—many airlines have daily nonstop flights from major cities in the U.S.—then pick up a one-hour connecting flight to Edinburgh. For a comprehensive guide to London’s Heathrow Airport, see page 142. There are also direct flights from Newark to Edinburgh and Glasgow on Continental. For more information, visit cometoscotland.com .

Most Scottish country hotels include dinner in the price of a room.

Boath House Hotel An eight-room Regency mansion where Slow Food chef Charles Lockley creates six-course Scottish dinners. Nairn; 44-1667/454-896; boath-house.com ; doubles from $405, including breakfast, $486 including breakfast and dinner.

Counting sheep. Not a good thing to be doing while navigating the narrow dual carriageways and even more confining rural roads that traverse eastern Scotland. In a country seemingly more populated by sheep than people, even the major motorway leading to and from the Highlands is only two lanes. During not-infrequent construction projects the route shrinks to one, a situation abjectly apologized for on the spot by the highway authority. But sitting in a line of traffic fully stopped to allow oncoming cars to pass afforded me the chance to study, between fleeting downpours, the lay of the land and the sheep upon it: lambs stumbling after their mothers; rams falling into line behind a leader; ewes grouped in a chat. Black faces blinked back at me, small heads pegged Tinkertoy-like to barrels of fluff atop twiggy black-stockinged legs. No matter where you look in Scotland, the landscape is littered with ruminants out of the popular British Claymation films of . But far from just comical characters, they are the leading representatives of an industry as significant and particular to Scotland as whisky: woolens.

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