Cairnpapple Hill

Were it just a barren hill with nothing on it Cairnpapple Hill would still be worth the trip out of Edinburgh. It arguably has the best effort-to-view ratio of any hill in Scotland with only a few steps separating the car park from an epic view across a whole swathe of Central Scotland. You can see Edinburgh from up here. And Glasgow. Cairnpapple is also one of the most important prehistoric sites in Europe. When it was excavated in 1947–48 the summit of the hill was found to be crowned with ceremonial and burial monuments stretching back as far as 4000 BC. The remnants of a fallen stone circle can clearly be seen (a legacy of the site's use as a venue for ceremonies of which we know very little), as can the main Bronze Age burial chamber itself.