Iain Banks

The Highlands define Scotland; they represent the land. For all the richness of the Borders and the fertile east, and the past fame of a prematurely paralysed industrial heartland, for all the stony grandeur of Edinburgh and the vitality and wit found in Glasgow, the Highlands inspire the most immediate and resonant association with the nation's name.

The islands – Inner and Outer Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetland – are variously different again, and in that ascending order of independence.

I'm a lowlander; born in Fife and raised there and on Clydeside, so the Highlands are a foreign place to me too. They're where I intend to settle though, and where a lot of other outsiders have already escaped to, departing the rodent rally of the South. My own particular sights are targeted vaguely on Benderloch and Appin - between Oban and Fort William - but it rarely pays to set your heart too fixedly on things in this land; a little flexibility pays.

One thing which requires flexibility in the Highlands - of holiday plans and clothes, if nothing else - is the weather. It has to be said at the outset that it is perfectly possible to spend two weeks in the Highlands, and travel a couple of thousand miles, and never see more than the first few hundred feet of any mountain before it disappears into the cloud, and only the nearest mile or so of loch before the view is obscured by driving rain.

On a fine day, the Highlands can be one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places on the planet; in foul weather... well, there are some excellent hotels with roaring fires and mouthwatering food, and plenty of all-day bars with friendly people willing to enjoy a good natter.

If peace and quiet's required, the Highlands can provide. There are few experiences quite as restful as sitting by the side of a loch with no noise but that of rustling leaves, lapping waves, and the distant whisper of waterfalls on a nearby mountain. The very presence of those hills imposes an air of quiet grandeur, a sort of setness to the pervasive sense of calm that flatter or more rolling countryside does not seem able to match. A well-sited hotel, chalet, caravan or tent can offer a holiday even more relaxing than a Mediterranean beach (and you don't normally have to worry about consolidated/late/redirected flights back from overcrowded and underseated airports, either).

But the Highlands are too extensive and various not to be worth travelling in, and the journeying itself can be a large part of the enjoyment. There are three glorious railway routes through the West Highlands: the Kyle, Mallaig and Oban lines.

The scenery surrounding the Inverness-Kyle of Lochalsh line is never dull, and frequently grand, but in its final stages, approaching Kyle itself, it becomes quite extravagantly - and surprisingly delicately - beautiful, twisting through the jumbled greenery, water and rock towards the coast.

The Oban line is equally impressive, if marginally less intricate in its appeal. But my own favourite is the Mallaig line, sharing the high, splendid views of Loch Long with the Oban route, but then heading north instead of east at Crianlarich to traverse the watery desolation of Rannoch Moor (where in winter whole dark herds of deer startle and run over the wilderness of snow), then descending impressively alongside Loch Trieg, and - beyond Fort William and Loch Eil - winding itself through a bafflingly dense conglomeration of boulder and rhododendron, pine and heather, grass and loch, bridge and cutting into the port of Mallaig itself. All that, and in summer there are steam trains.

The Highland roads, largely by being more numerous, are even more dramatic.  In the right conditions, this is a driver's paradise; the roads are almost as beautiful as the landscape. For anyone who enjoys driving, the Highlands can offer exhilaration impossible on the overcrowded roads of the Midlands and South-East: off-the-scale-tempting straights, gloriously sweeping open bends, skill-testing climbs, and a general sense of light and shade about the experience of driving that seems lost forever in most other places in Britain, and certainly on all motorways.

In summer, of course, the press-on driver has to allow for slower-moving sightseers, and it's all too easy to develop a hatred of caravans, but the enjoyment is still there to be found.  My favourite road - not absolutely fast, but certainly challenging - has to be the one over the Pass of the Cattle, from Kishorn to Applecross. Not for the faint-hearted or the weak-clutched, but worth it both for the sheer fun (and sheer drops) and the stunning views of Skye at the summit. This road is single track, and the passing places are there as much to permit overtaking as to let traffic pass in the opposite direction (they are not parking).  If you've ever sat fuming behind a single tractor and hay-laden trailer on a narrow country road, imagine how the locals in the Highlands feel sitting behind a succession of slower drivers (usually driving better, faster cars than theirs). The rule is very simple: if somebody's sitting on your tail, pull in and let them overtake.

When you do stop travelling, the Highlands have a wealth of places to stay, from the most rough-and-ready roadside campsites to some very fine hotels indeed. It is a little unfair to single out any particular establishment, but two places worth recommending, for a combination of accommodation, cuisine and situation, are the Airds Hotel, Port Appin, and the Altnahara Inn, across Loch Broom from Ullapool, where the proprietor himself ferries you over. Both create meals worth crossing the Highlands on foot for.

At the other end of the financial scale, there's the Ben Take-Away in Fort William, which produces delicious kebabs. It's just around the corner from another highly recommendable establishment, of particular interest to those on self-catering holidays: Wynne's the butchers. Quality meats, and a variety of black and white puddings, sausages and haggis that make breakfast worth getting up for - even with a bad hangover.

In the end, the Highlands are really too big and their attractions too multifarious to describe in one article. It's only possible to try and give an impression of the place, a flavour of the uncanny appeal this corner of the island exudes.

My own memories include the sound of the Falls of Lora at Connel, where the tide sweeps over the rocky narrows of Loch Etive; picnics on the snow-white sands of Morar and Ardnamurchan; the sight of the Ben Nevis massif, startlingly, icing-sugar clear in the winter air; strolling through the subtropical gardens of Inverewe in high summer; glimpsing golden eagles over Torridon; exploring the spent fastness of Castle Tioram and the misty eeriness of Carnasserie and Kilmartin; pipes and fiddles echoing in an antlered hotel hall lit by firelight; a heron fishing in Loch Linnhe, in front of the stepped locks of Neptune's Staircase on the Caledonian Canal; creamy rolling fields of foam girdling Cape Wrath's vast cliffs.

And, as a Scot, even as a lowland Scot, the shadow of a not-so-ancient sadness; that this land - never easy, always hard, but coped with, and lived in - was laid waste for sheep and money, and the blood-sporting pleasure of the few. Crofts burned to make those quaint little grassy mounds; people exiled to produce those wide, unlived-in sweeps of rock and grass.  In that legacy of heartbreak, what attracts us to the Highlands gains a poignancy. And so the Highlands define Scotland.