Cawdor Castle (cawdorcastle.com; adult/child £15.50/8.50), 13 miles northeast of Inverness, was once the seat of the Thane of Cawdor, a title bestowed on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But – spoiler alert – the real Macbeth, an ancient Scottish king, couldn’t have lived here because he died in 1057, 300 years before the castle was built. All the same, Cawdor is well worth a trip for its classic medieval trappings of drawbridge, turrets and tapestries; the original tower house was built on the site of a sacred holly tree which still survives in the cellar; it has been radiocarbon-dated to 1372.
The lavish interiors give a glimpse of the pampered lifestyle of the Scottish aristocracy – the Cawdor family have lived here for 23 generations – and the ornamental gardens are a treat, fringed with colorful flowerbeds and dotted with modern sculpture; a bronze minotaur peeps from the center of a maze made of holly bushes (currently closed to the public). Waymarked nature trails lead from the gardens into the dappled shade of the Big Wood with its ancient oaks – head south from the castle along the gorge of the Riereach Burn to the High Bridge, poised 40m above the foaming peat-stained waters.