Cairngorms National Park
— — the highest, coldest, oldest Britain has.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest national park in the United Kingdom, in the eastern Highlands of Scotland. Granite plateaus, ancient Caledonian pine, and five of Scotland's six highest peaks sit inside its boundary. The reindeer herd above Glenmore is the only one in the British Isles. Weather changes by the hour. Aviemore is where you stop for petrol and a coffee.
Cairngorms National Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cairngorms National Park covers 4,528 square kilometres of the eastern Scottish Highlands, the largest national park in the United Kingdom. It was established in 2003 and extended westward into Perth and Kinross in 2010. Inside its boundary are five of Scotland's six highest mountains, including Ben Macdui at 1,309 metres, the second-highest peak in the British Isles. The park stretches across parts of Highland, Aberdeenshire, Moray, Perth and Kinross, and Angus. Aviemore on the Strathspey line is the main gateway.
The Cairngorm plateau is the largest area of land above 1,000 metres in the British Isles. The climate at the summit ridge is sub-arctic, holding snow in the corries deep into spring and occasionally through the year in the deepest gullies. Loch Avon, ringed by the cliffs of the Garbh Choire, sits in a granite bowl that gathers and holds the cold. The reintroduced reindeer herd above Glenmore, brought from Sweden in 1952 by Mikel Utsi, is the only free-ranging herd in Britain.
Late August into October is when the heather on the lower slopes turns from green to the deep purple that gives the eastern Highlands their late-summer character. The autumn rut in the red deer population follows in October. The first snow on the high tops usually arrives by November, and the Cairngorm Mountain ski area opens when conditions hold. May and June bring the long northern light, with sunset after ten in the evening and the first light returning before four.