Bothy McWeevil – Across the Highlands

It is still a good contender for the “Pretend That You Will See Really Famous People Here” award.

Similar in some ways to those wildlife panels which give you the impression that rare and elusive animals will just be hanging around nearby waiting to be spotted.

2. Distilleries Various

Too obvious to qualify for any sort of award, but judging by the number of signs they are a nice little money-spinner.  A good distillery visit should also include a gifte shoppe selling items similar in price to the expensive whisky for the non-whisky lovers in the party of course.   “Darling, I’ve got you this limited edition Caithness glass paperweight.  Oh, and they are just wrapping up my bottle of 50 year old Glen GutRot.”

3. CarrBridge and the Golden Spurtle.

At last, a class act.  Leading contender for the “Invent The Event And They Will Come” award.  Braemar Games eat your heart out.

What is a spurtle, and why is it golden?  Marketing genius.

4. The Scottish Kiltmaker Visitor Centre

To be honest, Mr McW had started to get a bit worried that this whole competition was too demanding.  But following hot on the heels of the Golden Spurtle, we now have “We Have Your Tartan”.

That in itself is pretty good, but take a look at the detail and learn from this.  The list has hundreds of names but THERE ARE ONLY ABOUT TEN TARTANS.

So not only will you get your own, “personalised” kilt (which you will almost certainly never wear again), also they only have to keep a tiny amount of stock!

The tartan on offer for the Philipsons (with however many “L”s you want to have) is the “MacDonell of Keppoch” and if you zoom in to the detailed list you will see that this is used for any surname where they have no idea which tartan applies.  It probably shrieks out “I got taken for a sucker” to anyone who has been brought up in the world of tartans.  Like wearing an MCC tie when you obviously know nothing about cricket.

A kilt is about £300-£500 by the way.  An instant winner of the newly-invented “Golden Kilt Pin” award for high profit margin fleecing of foreign tourists.

5. The Loch Ness Monster

The small print at the bottom says “Download the app and see Nessie swim” at www.highlandar.co.uk, in case you are tempted.  You are!  Ha ha, another tick added to the award.

Due to a slight similarity of name with the Bicester Outlet Village, Doris spent a few days looking forward to this as a retail opportunity and wondering why exactly they were trying to sell seconds-quality branded goods apparently in the middle of nowhere.

It turns out to be one of the villages which were forcibly emptied of villagers during the Highland Clearances – much of which activity involved destroying the houses – in order to give the land over to sheep.  So we have a field where houses were.  And because people don’t live there any more, the roads to it are somewhat challenging.

A wet walk thorough a wood to stand in a field full of stony lumps liberally littered with sheep poo.  And they got Sid and Doris to do it.  Pity they couldn’t work out how to charge for it, but our visit cheered up the local petrol station.  Nevertheless it’s a good quality contender for it “It’s Free So Make ‘Em Work For It” award, and the presence of the sheep and their poo was an elegant finishing touch.