Chasing Daylight in Tarland, Scotland

I will forever remember it as one of the loveliest walks of our entire time in Scotland.

It was Taido’s birthday weekend and we talked Ben and Simon into getting out for a longer day so we drove a little further than usual (over an hour) and hiked a little further than usual (over 10 miles), and as a result discovered a trail that combines many of our favorite elements of walking in Scotland.

Forests, easy rolling hills, fern groves and moors of heather. The loop walk from Tarland to the top of Pressendye and back has a bit of everything.

By the end of the day I was dreaming of moving into this little village (and specifically the cottage in the photo on the hillside) so that this walk could become my daily stomping ground.

And while moving out in the middle of nowhere to the Highlands is a silly dream (the best kind!), I feel certain that we will go back to Tarland to do this trail again.

Taido found this walk on the website he uses to download hiking maps so if you’re in the Highlands or Aberdeenshire and you want a gorgeous, easy walk, you can follow the directions from Walk Highlands, but here are about a million (or twenty) photos to tempt you to make the journey.

You park in the darling village of Tarland and then walk on the road for a bit. I pointed to the hill in this photo to show how super gradual and the climb up is. You walk up this road, through a forest and then up the ridge to the hilltops.