Has all this lovely weather got you excited for summer? If you’re starting to plan your 2025 holidays, we’ve got good news: you won’t need to go far to experience something unforgettable.
Each year, TIME Magazine compiles a list of the greatest places in the world. This list encompasses all seven continents, every country, every city and nook and cranny to find the absolute best places you could possibly visit on Earth. This is like the ultimate bucket list, if you had unlimited time (and an unlimited budget).
From traversing deserts in Namibia to treetop residences in Peru, you have to offer a pretty life changing experience to be featured on this list. And as it turns out, not one but two such experiences can be found right here in the UK – and they’re both in Scotland.
Last year, Raffles at The OWO hotel in London was one of the UK’s two entries in the list, but this year, both of them are much, much farther north. Where exactly? The island of Islay, and the Flow Country on the northern tip of mainland Britain.
On Islay, TIME recommends Port Ellen, a gorgeous whisky distillery. Until last year it had been out of action since 1983, but now it has ‘roared back to life, ushering in a new era of luxury tourism’, according to TIME.
You can visit the brewery on a tour, complete with a taste of 46-year old malt and floor-to-ceiling views of the island. TIME explains that ‘the experience reveals, at once, the source of the property’s cherished past and the promising future of an entire island’.
Alternatively, make your way to the top of Caithness and Sutherland, the UK’s northernmost mainland authority to find the Flow Country. You’ll be greeted by miles and miles of untouched highland scenery and Europe’s largest ‘blanket bog’.
That might not sound immediately appealing, but TIME assure that it’s worth the trip, promising ‘nature lovers will catch flowering bog-bean and wading birds like the common greenshank’ and ‘come [autumn], bog plants turn red and brown, a [colourful] backdrop to the trumpeting of rutting stags.’
You can see the rest of TIME’s top places to visit in the world on their website here.
Planning your 2025 staycations
If you want a trip away that is less bog-heavy, here’s our favourite family friendly holiday digs. But you deserve to have fun too – here’s some tree houses you can rent out for something a little different. We’ve also got guides to the country’s cosiest cabins, and the coolest castles you can stay overnight in.
The pretty English town so popular with tourists that China wants to build a replica.
Full list of UK high street closures confirmed in 2025.
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