Road trip through the Scottish Highlands with a dog: castles, lochs and wild heather

The Highlands aren't a destination you can pin to a tight hourly timetable — they're open road. The region covers much of northern Scotland and has a remarkably low population density: kilometre after kilometre of heather moorland, pine forest and jagged coastline with barely a settlement in between. That sense of emptiness, which might put some people off, is precisely what makes it such a wonderful place for a dog: grass, water, space, and for most of the year, mild temperatures that mean you're never sheltering from the midday heat.

Scotland's "right to roam" — the right of responsible access to the countryside, enshrined in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 — allows you to walk across almost any open ground, including private estates, provided you follow a few basic rules: don't disturb livestock, keep your dog on the lead during the bird-nesting season (spring, particularly April and May) and near sheep, and always pick up after them. It's a freedom we simply don't have at home in Spain, and you feel it at every stop: nobody gives you a sideways look for letting your dog run across a field that isn't yours.

Many of the most spectacular spots — the lochs, the ruined castles, the coastal stretches — have small lay-bys right beside the road and short paths that start directly from them. That means the dog sets the rhythm of the trip: you stop when the view calls you, and within five minutes you're walking through heather rather than watching it through the window.

Inverness is the natural gateway to the Highlands: the largest city in northern Scotland, with its own airport and good road connections to the rest of the country. It's not really a destination in itself — it's compact and you can take it in over a morning — but it's the right place to pick up the hire car and spend a night before heading north, especially if you've arrived tired from a flight and with a dog who needs to stretch after hours of travel.

From Inverness, the road quickly hugs the banks of Loch Ness, Scotland's most famous loch and one of its longest: more than 36 kilometres of dark water hemmed between wooded hillsides. The monster legend is the tourist hook, but what you really take away is the atmosphere of the place: water so dark it looks like ink, stained by the peat washing down from the mountains, and a stillness broken only by gulls. There are several viewpoints with lay-bys along the shore where it's well worth stopping, letting Nube paddle in the cold water and spending a while watching the light shift across the loch.

On the banks of Loch Ness, the ruins of Urquhart Castle make the obvious stop on this first stage: a half-tumbled medieval fortress on a headland jutting directly into the water. The outer grounds and gardens can be explored with your dog without any trouble; only the interior of the towers and the exhibition rooms are off-limits, as is standard at Scottish historic monuments.

Driving west from Inverness, the road quickly narrows and starts to climb. The Wester Ross area is one of the most rugged in all the Highlands: mountains of bare rock, glacial valleys and a ragged coastline of sea lochs that stretch deep inland. The route to the Applecross peninsula takes in the Bealach na Bà, a mountain pass with tight hairpin bends that climbs above 600 metres and ranks among the steepest roads in the whole of the United Kingdom.

This is not a road for anyone in a hurry: it's narrow, down to a single lane on several stretches with passing places, and on foggy or windy days it's worth checking conditions before you head up. But at the top, at the highest point, the landscape suddenly opens up towards the islands of Skye and Raasay on the far side of the sea, and the silence is so thick you can feel your own pulse. We stopped up there for more than half an hour, with Nube scrambling about among the rocks while the clouds drifted up and down the hillside.

On the far side of the pass, the village of Applecross is little more than a handful of houses beside a shingle beach, with a pub that serves seafood straight from the sea. It's the sort of place where you end up staying longer than you planned: the beach is calm, with no strong surf, and perfect for a herding-instinct dog like Nube to chase waves without causing any bother. If you're tight on time, you can skip the Bealach na Bà and reach Applecross along the coastal road instead — longer, but none of the mountain-pass gradient.

Heading up to the north coast — towards Durness and the far north-west, along the route many people know as the North Coast 500 — means entering the most sparsely populated territory in the Highlands. Here the roads become single-track for long stretches, with passing places marked every few hundred metres to let oncoming traffic through. You drive slowly, not because you have to but because the landscape simply won't let you do otherwise: mountains that look carved by wind alone, tiny nameless lochans, and every so often a solitary house with smoke rising from the chimney.

The beaches along this coast were one of our biggest surprises. White sand, water in a shade of turquoise you wouldn't expect this far north, and almost always deserted, even during the busiest summer months. Sandwood Bay, which you can only reach after a walk of around eight kilometres along an unsurfaced track, is the most remote and the most rewarding: high dunes, a lone sea stack rising from the water and not a soul in sight. For those who don't fancy that kind of walk, there are equally beautiful beaches far more accessible by car, such as those around Durness, where Nube ran from one end to the other without crossing paths with anyone.

This area lives on passing trade, so it's worth planning where to fill up and eat: the villages are small and shops are thin on the ground outside the peak season. It's also where you'll be most grateful for having food and water for your dog in the car, because between one village and the next you can easily go more than an hour without seeing a single open shop.

Heading back inland from the north coast, the landscape shifts again: the cliffs give way to vast sweeps of heather — the Scottish moor — which in summer, from late July through to September, turns a deep purple that blankets entire hillsides as far as you can see. It's a landscape that impresses through sheer scale: no fences, barely a tree, and the wind blowing almost constantly, giving the heather a perpetual movement, as though it's breathing.

Dotted through this open territory you come across, every now and then, ruined castles that no longer guard anything: truncated towers, roofless walls, surrounded by grass where once there were moats and baileys. Unlike the restored castles heaving with visitors in the cities, these Highland ruins typically have free access or a small lay-by beside the road, with no queues or strict opening times, and you can walk around them with your dog off the lead as long as there's no livestock nearby. There's something about seeing a deserted medieval fortress with heather growing through the fallen stones that tells the story of this land more eloquently than any information panel.

These inland stretches are also where you're most likely to spot red deer, particularly at dawn and dusk when they come down from higher ground to graze. If you have a dog with you, it's worth putting them on the lead as soon as you spot deer near the road or the path — not because of any danger to the dog, but because a dog with a chase instinct — like Nube, who is a border collie through and through — can be after a deer in seconds and out of sight in terrain with no landmarks to navigate back by.

Travelling through the Highlands requires a shift in mindset compared to a city road trip: there's no petrol station on every corner and no supermarket open late into the evening. On the more remote stretches of the north coast and the west, it's worth topping up the tank as soon as it drops below halfway, because a fair distance can pass before you reach the next station — and some of them close early in the afternoon outside peak season.

Pet-friendly accommodation isn't a problem in this region: unlike in the big cities, a good proportion of B&Bs, country inns and self-catering cottages throughout the Highlands are well used to guests with dogs, because many of the people who come here do so precisely to walk the countryside with their companion. That said, it's always worth confirming before you book, because places are limited — many accommodations have only a handful of rooms — and in peak season, between June and August, they fill up weeks in advance.

For food, village pubs are the most reliable option: almost all of them have a dog-friendly area, they serve hearty dishes — venison stew, fish of the day, thick soups — and in many of them the landlord's own dog is stretched out by the fire, which gives you a good sense of how naturally animals fit into everyday Scottish life. Nube has tucked herself under more pub tables on this trip than in all our other travels combined.

The Highland climate is the single biggest factor shaping the trip, and it pays to set your expectations accordingly. It can change several times in a single afternoon: sunshine, low mist and fine drizzle follow one another without warning, even in the summer months. Rainfall is high throughout the year, so a waterproof jacket for the dog and plenty of warm layers for yourselves are non-negotiable, whatever time of year you travel.

May to September is generally the most rewarding window: long days — with light lingering until well past ten o'clock on June evenings — mild temperatures of between 12 and 18 degrees, and the heather in bloom from late July onwards. The downside of this period is the midges — tiny biting insects found in the damp zones of Scotland, which appear mainly at dusk on calm evenings and are most prevalent near lochs and woodland. They don't bite dogs with the same intensity as humans, but it's worth carrying repellent for the hours of peak activity, particularly near water and trees.

Outside that window, autumn turns the woodlands amber and there are far fewer people about, though the days shorten considerably; winter brings snow to the higher ground and some mountain roads — including the Bealach na Bà — can close temporarily due to ice, so it's worth checking road conditions before you head up if you're travelling between November and March.