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Stately old Edinburgh is a delight, even—or particularly—outside the jam-packed festival season (Aug. 19-Sept. 8). Sir Walter Scott country and Loch Lomond make a good two-day excursion. A fine place to stay is Greywalls Hotel, 18 miles east of Edinburgh, in the Gullane area, which boasts ten golf courses. For a taste of the real Highlands, there is the rocky county of Ross and Cromarty, which rolls across Scotland from the North Sea to the Atlantic. Strathgarve Lodge at Garve offers deer hunting, fishing, golf and well-wrought meals on a 1,000-acre estate (double room with breakfast: $50).
IRELAND. The west coast is another of the world's beauty spots where dollars are still emerald green. It is caressed by the Gulf Stream, and the summers are usually mild and pleasant. At hostelries like the converted Kinsale monastery at the mouth of the Bandon River (double room: $50), history is in the air, but the comforts are strictly modern. Some west coast castles and stately homes have been transformed into hotels with swimming pools and tennis courts. The salmon and trout, as they say, are beggin' to be caught. No self-respecting village is without its choice of pubs, often with regular folk singing and dancing. A double room in a country inn costs around $30.
FRANCE. The good news is that the government is giving high priority to the tourist trade. The bad news is that 80% of all Frenchmen still insist on vacationing within France, most of them during July and August. Finding the unspoiled places is largely up to the individual. This means avoiding the Riviera and other trendy areas such as the Dordogne-Périgord, the summer festival towns like Aix-en-Provence, Avignon and Carcassonne.
Some of the best of la belle France is within convenient reach of Paris. Less than 200 miles south of the capital lie the vine-covered slopes of Burgundy. Rooms and restaurant tables are plentiful. The grands crus wines, especially those grown on the Côte d'Or, the Slope of Gold, and the Côte de Beaune can be sampled along with lesser vintages at wine caves or the many charming restaurants along the road. The great regional dishes are considerably less expensive than pallid Parisian versions of this essentially peasant food. The one-star Les Gourmets at Mar-sannay-la-Côte serves a $12 dinner.
The food, the wine and the sights complement each other. Châteaux and churches along the wine route from Dijon to Beaune are open all day and illuminated at night. Vestiges of the mother of medieval abbeys-the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul at Cluny, established in 910—still stand. Cluny, together with the 11th century Church of St. Philibert at Tournus and that acropolis of Middle Ages Christianity, the Basilica at Vézelay, along with Burgundy's 505 other churches, are among Europe's great treasures of romanesque architecture.