Scotland is bounded on three sides by the sea: by the wild Atlantic to the west and north and by the temperamental North Sea beyond the eastern coastline. Across its historically fluctuating southern land boundary lies England, at different times enemy and friend, but never indifferent neighbour. The western sea boundary is fringed with several large, inhabited islands and hundreds of small ones deprived of inhabitants. Off the north coast lie the Orkney Islands, and 60 miles further to the north-east and halfway to Norway are the Shetlands. The total land area, including the islands, is just over 30,400 square miles, only slightly smaller than Ireland. Mountains dominate the mainland, with the rugged Scottish Highlands reaching to over 1,300 metres. Ben Macdui (1,309 metres), highest of the Cairngorms in the north-east, and Ben Nevis (1,344 metres) in the west are the highest mountains in the whole of the Isles. The mountains continue all the way to the northern coast of Scotland, especially on the west side, where millions of years of erosion, compounded by the gouging action of the glaciers, which covered the whole of Scotland in the last Ice Age, have left a dramatic landscape.
