Plockton

Palms and cabbage trees line the waterfront at Plockton, warmed by the North Atlantic Drift despite sitting further north than Moscow. The village faces a sheltered bay where common seals haul out on the rocks in front of the whitewashed cottages, and the water stays mirror-calm while the open coast is battered by Atlantic gales.

Plockton is a small village on Loch Carron in Wester Ross, its microclimate so unexpectedly temperate that subtropical plants thrive in cottage gardens beside traditional Highland flora. The seal colonies haul out close offshore, keeping their own calendar, and footpaths climb from the village to views across Skye and the Applecross peninsula. Television found the place as the setting for Hamish Macbeth, but locals would rather be known for their seals, their gardens and their regatta tradition, and after the crews left, the village simply went back to being what it was: one curved street of stone cottages between the palms and the water.