It turns out that getting from the Isle of Raasay to Dublin in a single day is perfectly doable. You just need to take a ferry, drive to Inverness Airport, fly to Belfast, catch a bus to the train station, take a train to Dublin and then jump in a taxi to your hotel. Easy. I’d just finished a few days on Raasay celebrating the latest Turas Mòr whisky launch, and my next adventure was waiting for me in Ireland. By the time I reached the hotel, I had precisely ten minutes to spare before...

Why now might be the best time ever to plan an Islay whisky adventure I first started going to Islay in the early 2000s. Back then, it felt properly disconnected. No mobile phone signal worth speaking of, WiFi was definitely not a thing, and the whole island had that wonderful sense that you had genuinely left the mainland behind. You did not so much arrive on Islay as slowly detach from the rest of the world. For fans, that was part of the magic. Islay has always felt different. More remote....

There are whisky festivals, and then there is the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival. For a few glorious days each year, Speyside becomes the centre of the whisky universe. Distilleries open their doors, rare drams appear, whisky fans descend from all over the world, and the whole region becomes one big celebration of Scotch whisky, local stories, good people and questionable hydration choices. For CopperCairn and Not Another Whisky Podcast, Spirit of Speyside 2026 was our biggest festival...