Tell us about your special places

Published on 27/01/2009 18:36

TODAY, Recommends launches a hunt to find the most inspiring sights in Scotland. These fantastic photographs from Andy Hall's book – A Sense of Belonging To Scotland – showcase some of the choices of public figures asked to choose their very own special places.

We want you, the readers of Recommends, to follow their lead and tell us about YOUR special places. In the year of Homecoming, we want to tap into your passion in Scotland.

We have teamed up with Homecoming Scotland and the Fairmont St Andrews, one of Scotland's finest resort hotels, to encourage readers to submit inspirational images – and win some fantastic prizes along the way.

All you have to do is take a picture of the place that inspires you most – and send it to us with a BRIEF explanation why it is so special to you. Photographs can feature people, places, events, landscapes – whatever inspires you most in Scotland in 2009. E-mail your entries to [e-mail] – marking it clearly INSPIRING SCOTLAND – or send it in to Inspiring Scotland, c/o David Lee, Recommends, The Scotsman, 108 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AS.

The best entry in the first month will be used on the cover of Recommends on Wednesday 25 February – and a selection of others in the centre pages. The winner gets a year's membership to the Fairmont St Andrews spa and health club plus four tickets for the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Trail and afternoon tea for four at the Willow Tea Rooms.

2009 is the centenary of the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art, hailed as his masterpiece. A series of exhibitions, talks, tours and activities take place at the school and other Mackintosh venues from 29 January to 30 November. Many events are free; more details can be found at www.gsa.ac.uk/homecoming.

We will name a winner – and runners-up – on the last Wednesday of every month through to 28 October – with a great prize for each monthly winner. All nine monthly winners then fight it out to be the overall victor, to be announced on Wednesday 25 November, ahead of St Andrew's Day. The panel of judges will include Andy Hall, Recommends editor David Lee and Scotsman picture editor Andy O'Brien.

The overall winner wins this fantastic prize:

&#149 Two nights' bed and breakfast for two in a deluxe room at the Fairmont St Andrews plus one spa treatment each and a round of golf on Kittocks and Torrance courses.

&#149 VIP tickets to the Homecoming Live musical extravaganza – the finale of Homecoming.

&#149 A photography masterclass with Andy Hall.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and be inspired!