Hello! I’m Ian Macleod, and I have lived and worked in the beautiful West Highlands of Scotland for 30 years. For the last 12 years, I have been offering my services as a guide, specialising in finding the local wildlife and offering photography tuition. I can also offer more general tours with a historical and cultural bias.

However, my connection with the highlands goes much further back as both my parents were born and grew up on the Isle of Skye, where most of my childhood holidays were spent. Through my love of skiing, walking the mountains, cycling and kayaking I have come to know the mountains, lochs, glens and back roads of the highlands intimately and it would be my great pleasure to share my knowledge and understanding of this beautiful country with you.

On my tours you will come to have a better understanding of how this wild and beautiful landscape was formed by fire and ice in more turbulent times, learn how and where to look for the wonderful wildlife of the highlands, hear stories of selkies (seal people) and kelpies (water horses). You will also learn about the feuding clans and the part they played in shaping the Scotland of today.

Of course, I can take you to all the visitor hotspots such as Ben Nevis, Loch Ness, the Fairy pools or Culloden battlefield. But surely the real value of a local guide is to help you discover those places that few others do? We can walk to a tranquil hidden beach passing through a deserted fishing village, travel twisty single track roads to look for otters and eagles and take the UK’s longest dead-end road to find magnificent stags grazing by the roadside.  Or just listen to the silence.

You choose. I will take you there