Visit a wild and beautiful Scottish island owned by its residents

Scotland is wildest around islands such as cloud-wreathed Boreray, part of the St. Kilda archipelago, where nesting gannets stream out across the evening sky in the thousands.

In the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, sheep graze among the 5,000-year-old Stones of Stenness. "History is as pervasive as rain in Scotland," says photographer Jim Richardson, "and always near to hand."

Since 1823, the Lonach Highland and Friendly Society has gathered annually in the Highlands to preserve Gaelic language, traditional dress, and 'peaceable manly conduct'.

Halfway between Shetland and Orkney in the North Atlantic, Fair Isle has only one phone box—plenty for its population of around 60.

Fishermen on the island haul up and store their rowboats, called yoals, on the beach in timeworn, stone-lined 'noosts'.

Scottish shores and beaches, like this one on the Isle of Much, are myth-laden places, alive with tales of selkies (seductive seal-women) and kelpies (shape-shifting horses).

Duncan MacDonald has spent summers cutting peat blocks in the bogs of Lewis to burn in winter fires since he was a "wee boy," he says.

Lesley Matheson raises Highland cattle for beef sold to upmarket restaurants throughout Europe.

Sculptor, Andy Scott, laboured eight years on 'The Kelpies', 30-metre (98-foot) tall, stainless-steel horse heads that seem to emerge from the Forth and Clyde Canal in Falkirk.

On Lewis, history clutters the hills around Dun Carloway. Stones taken from the broch, an Iron Age defensive structure, now lie scattered throughout the isle, embedded in fences and walls.