• Stockbridge, Edinburgh: A slight bohemian edge, tidy workers’ cottages turned expensive real estate, a farmer’s market, and lots of gastropubs and galleries make this village within the city a preferred hangout of urbane Dunedians (as residents of Edinburgh are called). Adding to the charm of this seriously pretty neighbourhood is the gem on its doorstep, the 70-acre Royal Botanic Garden.
  • Culross, Fife: This picture-postcard collection of medieval houses and quaint cottages on the Firth of Forth may be the fairest village in the land, and that’s no accident—the National Trust for Scotland has painstakingly preserved this 17th-century time capsule to ensure that each step on the cobbled streets is a step back in time.
  • Pittenweem, Fife: In the easternmost and most lively of Fife’s historic fishing villages, jaunty trawlers chug out of to sea and unload their catch and lobster pots at a bustling morning fish market, the very one where Pittenweem Jo, “every fisher laddie’s dream” of folk song fame, “guts the herrin doon buy the quay.”
  • Kirkcudbright, Galloway: Generations of artists have been transported by the spectacle of the light playing off the sea in this pretty little seaside village on the Galloway coast. You will, too, while enjoying the works they’ve left behind in the Tolbooth Art Centre and a walk along the wharves.
  • Tobermory, Isle of Mull: The pretty port, unofficial capital of the rugged island, is not much more than a row of brightly painted houses facing a flotilla of boats bobbing in a sheltered harbor. Adding to the romance of the isolated setting is the alleged presence of a Spanish treasure of gold bullion somewhere on the seabed.
  • Stromness, Mainland, Orkney: In this picturesque port, wedged between the sea on one side and a tall granite ridge on the other, it’s easy to imagine the masts of 19th-century clipper ships swaying above the slate rooftops of gabled houses and the longboats of Vikings floating in the sheltered anchorage.

Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.