Making wildlife programmes in Scotland is as about as good as it gets," according to wildlife cameraman Fergus Gill, whose credits include Maramedia’s Stormborn and Shetland – Scotland’s Viking Frontier. Fell-walking writer Alfred Wainwright called misty, island-dotted Ullswater the “loveliest of lakes”.Board the all-year Steamers for a boat ride to remote Howtown Pier and hike five miles along the daffodil-waymarked Ullswater Way past waterfalls and mossy woods to Patterdale (for Wainwright, this stretch is the “most beautiful and rewarding walk in Lakeland”). From the Shetland Isles in the North to the Inner Hebrides in the South, these isles are teeming with life. In the North-West, sitting low in the Atlantic, are the remote Monach Isles, they’ve been uninhabited since the 1940s when the last people left these shores. And now every autumn the white sand beaches host the largest breeding colony of grey seals in Europe. More than 10,000 pups are born each year and they have just a few short weeks to get ready for independence. The absence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended the inauguration of the previous president in 2018, was noticeable at Mr Muizzu's swearing-in ceremony. In the heart of Edinburgh, the fastest animal in the world – the peregrine falcon, now graces the sky on a daily basis. A pair have recently started raising a family here, an example of this flagship species’ return from the brink of extinction in the 1960s. Further out in the suburbs, other animals are adapting to the urban environment too. By the Water of Leith, a family of foxes have made a home, their tiny cubs starting to explore the world outside their den, learning the skills needed for independence. But there’s still plenty of time for play. Across the central belt in Glasgow, lives a hardy colony of water voles, nowhere near water. They are the only population known to live in burrows in open grassland anywhere in the UK, and were only discovered here in 2008, initially thought to be rats.

The main train station is in Aviemore – regular trains from Edinburgh, Perth, Glasgow, Inverness and an overnight sleeper from London stop here. Anyone planning to travel by train can make journeys across the UK with Scotrail and East Coast Trains. You might consider using Trainline to plan your journey.As long as you park somewhere sensible, remote and you aren’t invading a “no overnight parking” sign then you’ll find you have no trouble wild camping in Scotland. Risk of theft is possible everywhere around the world so you should always take the necessary precautions. An overall great spot to stay the night, or simply stop off at if you need to get fresh water and empty your toilet. Ben Lomond Car Park So this could mean staying in a field, parking up by a lake, in a beach carpark, or in a large parking layby.

And, after the swearing in of new Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu last week, there are concerns China will take advantage of a fresh anti-India push from the new government to increase its already growing influence. Who's the new president and what does he stand for?There is room for 5-10 vans, but because this place is popular with locals for dog walking, I would recommend leaving early in the morning so you aren’t taking up valuable parking space for them. There is room for around 7 motorhomes and free water is available to refill your water tanks and grey waste disposal!

But it has also emerged at the centre of a strategic battle between regional superpowers, India and China. This game of pro- and anti-India or China is mainly restricted to the political class because what matters most to people are things like street lights, fish processing units, school digitisation programs and speech therapy units with which India is the lead player," Ms Tambi said. They’re encouraging it further with their “Stay the night” campaign that was trialed by the Forestry Commission. Living in rural Perthshire, it meant cameraman Fergus was having to sit and study the fauna virtually on his own doorstep that spring. And from that came one of the magical scenes in the series, a woodland glen carpeted with bluebells, with red squirrels and roe deer.Applecross is a wild and rugged area on the NC500, but it’s clamping down on wild camping in certain areas. This was another of my favourite wild camping spots in Scotland, simply because we were parked right next to Braemar Castle which is not only a really cool castle in the daylight, but it’s lit up at night so it looks brilliant! There are the Forestry Commission area and the non-forestry Commission area which is right by the lake.

The hills and glens of the Highlands define Scotland for the world. Dominated by hills, glens, lochs, rivers and forests, it’s a landscape that’s been heavily altered by people and climate. Once a great forest covered much of this land, but now little remains. In the central highlands lie the Cairngorms, a vast plateau where Scotland’s greatest Arctic alpine environment can be found and home to Scotland’s only free-roaming reindeer herd. For thousands of years reindeer roamed these hills but were eventually lost due to hunting and climate pressures. But in the 1960s this herd was reintroduced. By the middle of Spring, they’re joined on the high tops by a true Highland specialist, the dotterel. These trusting little birds return here from North Africa to breed, flitting around the melting snow patches in search of food. They’ve been in huge decline in recent years as climate pressure takes its toll on this small population on the southern edge of its breeding range. For the very first time their breeding behaviour is captured on camera. New Delhi will hope that diplomacy can convince Mr Muizzu to change his mind about expelling the Indians, because, the quality of life of regular Maldivians could suffer, according to Ms Tambi. Getting to the Monach Isles was particularly fraught as there are no jetties or indeed any infrastructure there and passage to the island has to be negotiated by seafarers who are totally familiar with the shore and very aware of dangerous skerries to avoid… And the man, who was due to take them there – one of the few with this knowledge – went down with Covid. Essentially it means that when you leave a wild camping spot in Scotland, there should be no trace that you were even there, to begin with!

Best wild camping spots near Oban 

A coalition of the Freedom Party, VVD, and the NSC party of centrist lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt would have 81 seats combined, making it the most obvious combination but which could still take months of difficult talks. The parking for the castle is 2 minutes to the castle so you can go for a morning or evening stroll. Mr Wilders' rode a wave of anti-immigration sentiment, blaming a housing shortage on flows of asylum seekers and drawing on widespread concerns about the cost of living and the overburdened healthcare system. At Dundee, the Tay nears the end of its journey. Out on the mudflats huge numbers of wading birds gather to forage, racing against the incoming tide in search of food, before setting off to look for somewhere quiet to rest and wait out high water. Further inland lies one of Scotland’s great agriculture heartlands. Here two special families of marsh harriers are nesting, both with a shared secret and filmed for the very first time in Scotland.