Текст на английском про Шотландию

Scotland is a country in the north of Great Britain. It is a part of the United Kingdom.

The capital of Scotland is Edinburgh. There is a big old castle in the city. Glasgow is the biggest city.

Scotland has got mountains, lakes and green hills. A lake in Scotland is a 'loch'. Loch Ness is very famous.

Some Scottish men wear kilts. A kilt is a skirt for men! People like bagpipe music.

The weather is often cold and rainy, but Scotland is very beautiful.

Last August I went to Edinburgh with my parents. We stayed in a small hotel in the Old Town, near the castle.

Every day the streets were full of people because the city was having a big festival. Actors, musicians and clowns were performing everywhere. I think it was the busiest and noisiest city in the world!

One day we took a bus to the Highlands. The mountains were higher and wilder than I expected. We stopped at Loch Ness, but we didn't see the monster!

I tried haggis, a traditional Scottish dish. It looked strange, but it was tasty. My dad bought a tartan scarf in the colours of a Scottish clan.

The weather changed every hour, so we always carried umbrellas. Next year we are going to visit the islands in the west.

Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain and has around eight hundred islands. Its landscape is very varied: in the south there are gentle hills and farmland, while the north is famous for the Highlands, where Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the United Kingdom, is located.

The country has a long and dramatic history. For centuries Scotland was an independent kingdom, and many castles which were built during its wars with England can still be visited. In 1707 Scotland and England were united into one state, Great Britain.

Scotland has given the world a surprising number of inventions and ideas. Alexander Graham Bell, who is known for inventing the telephone, was born in Edinburgh, and the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. The writers Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson were also Scottish.

Scottish traditions are still very much alive. At the Highland Games, people compete in throwing heavy stones and logs, and on Burns Night they read poems by Robert Burns and eat haggis.

I have read 'Treasure Island' twice, and since then I have dreamt of seeing Scotland with my own eyes. If I ever go there, I will definitely climb Ben Nevis.

Few small nations have exerted as much influence on the world's imagination as Scotland. With a population smaller than that of many large cities, it has nevertheless produced philosophers, scientists and writers whose ideas have travelled to every continent.

Part of the explanation lies in its history of education. Long before universal schooling became common elsewhere, Scottish communities placed great value on literacy, and by the eighteenth century Edinburgh had become one of the intellectual centres of Europe. Thinkers such as the economist Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume, working during what is now called the Scottish Enlightenment, helped to lay the foundations of modern thought.

Yet Scotland's appeal is not merely intellectual. Its landscapes, shaped by glaciers and constantly changing light, have an almost theatrical quality. Standing on a windswept hillside above a loch, one can easily understand why so many legends and ghost stories were born here, and why writers like Walter Scott chose to set their novels in such scenery.

It would be a mistake, however, to romanticise the past entirely. During the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of families were forced off their land to make way for sheep farming, and many emigrated to Canada, America and Australia. Had those communities been allowed to stay, the Highlands would probably look very different today.

What impresses me most is the way modern Scotland combines pride in its traditions with openness to the world. Rarely does a country manage to celebrate bagpipes and tartan without turning them into mere souvenirs, yet Scotland seems to do exactly that.