A great time of year for a Highland fling

The crowds have gone but there’s plenty going on in the wild and wonderful north, writes Sandy Neil

An advantage to autumn travel is that there’s so few tourists around. The summer season is over, and most people are back at work while you pack your hat and saunter outside for a week or two of culture in the Highlands.

On an iconic date – 9/10/11 – in the Cairngorms National Park, Carrbridge will be stirred by the World Porridge Championship. Every year the Golden Spurtle is awarded to the porridge-maker who makes the best bowlful using only oatmeal, salt and water – and there’s even a prize for best ‘speciality porridge’ with extra ingredients.

Discover if Scotland defends the title at www.goldenspurtle.com, or watch the contest live in Carrbridge the day before World Porridge Day, which raises awareness and funds for Mary’s Meals, a Scottish-based charity daily feeding over 500,000 of the poorest school children in 16 countries from Albania to Zambia (www.marysmeals.org.uk).

Faclan, The Hebridean Book Festival on Lewis, Harris, Barra and Benbecula from 27 to 29 October, explores as its theme the supernatural and An Dà Shealladh, or Second Sight, in the deep, dark spiritual Otherworld familiar to generations of Gaels. Haunt www.faclan.org for the line-up of ghost stories, folklore, songs, poetry, silent horror films with live piano – and perhaps most weird of all, a talk by Alistair Darling on his book Back from the Brink: 1,000 days of the World Financial Crisis from the Inside.

The tenth Crieff and Strathearn Drovers’ Tryst Walking Festival from 8 to 15 October celebrates the journeys and lives of the cattle drovers who converged on Crieff each October in the 1700s, when the Crieff Tryst was the largest cattle market in Scotland. Visit www.droverstryst.com.

The north of Scotland also hosts a brace of film festivals soon: the Inverness Film Festival from 9 to 13 November (www.invernessfilmfestival.com), and the Cromarty Film Festival from 2 to 4 December (www.cromartyfilmfestival.org), where cinema screenings take place anywhere from the Old Brewery to a gable end.

Lighting up autumn nights from 28 October to 6 November is the Perthshire Amber Festival (www.perthshireamber.com) inspired by the songwriter and composer Dougie MacLean, left, who joins musicians such as Phil Cunningham, Kris Drever and John McCusker in venues as varied as castles and cathedrals to an iron age crannog. Also in Perthshire on 29 October, there’s the Perth All Scotland Accordion and Fiddle Festival (www.perthaccordionfestival.co.uk). The Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Festival features a hundred local musicians and as many more visiting bands playing all across the Shetland Isles from 6 to 10 October. Visit www.shetlandaccordionandfiddle.com .