From fishing to foraging, cookery lessons to whisky blending, the Scottish countryside has all the ingredients for the perfect culinary adventure, writes Nick Elvin.

It’s 9.30am, and I'm on my way to meet the ghillie at the bothy.

These are not the kinds of words a Sassenach hears every day, so I’m quick to seek a translation. Turns out that the ghillie is a gamekeeper and guide, while the bothy is in fact a type of shelter, on this occasion a cabin located on the banks of the River Tay.

This is Kinnaird, a 7,000 acre estate in the beautiful Perthshire countryside, a land of towering Munros, silvery lochs, dark forests and babbling burns.

My group, on a tour organised by Visit Scotland, is here for a spot of salmon fishing. Apparently the fish get quite big in this stretch of river, and specimens as heavy as 38lbs have been caught in recent years.

Our ghillie is Martin who, fully decked out in tweeds, looks like he knows the ropes. We climb aboard a wooden motorboat and head downstream, learning as we go the idiosyncrasies of the river. One moment it's five feet deep, the next it's anything up to ten times that depth. It’s an idyllic setting, with the morning sun shimmering off the surface of the water, and horses grazing in the nearby fields.

Martin turns the boat back upstream and we put out four rods, three with spinning lures (one is called the Tasmanian Devil, due to its erratic behaviour in the water), the other with a fly. We troll slowly, moving between the lazy pools and fast shallows, looking for just the hint of a bite.

As the motor pushes us slowly but surely against the flow, Martin tells us that instead of scaring off the fish the engine noise actually makes them curious. Unfortunately, no bite is offered by said fish, so we decide to try our luck casting from the bank. No luck.

Food is the reason I'm in Scotland, and a morning's fishing really builds up an appetite. The Kinnaird estate is fully aware of this, and they dispatch their outdoor butler to the bothy with a hamperful of tasty treats including cold meats, cheeses, soup, salad, fruit, wine and tea. You can if you wish also arrange for the butler to bring hot toddies during your fishing trip, and there's even a boot warming service available.

If, like me, your first attempt at opening Scotland’s autumn larder fails, there’s always another option around the corner. At the bothy we meet up with Fiona Houston and Xa Milne from Forage Rangers. They organise bespoke foraging tours and have also written a book, Seaweed and Eat It, on the subject.

After a quick briefing, they take us to a remote corner of the estate and instruct us to return in 45 minutes with whatever we can gather. Pheasants fly by at regular intervals, but we’re told that any we bag won't count, probably because there are so many of them.

I head into the dense bracken and birches where the going is quite tough and the mushrooms are small, except for the meaty-looking but inedible bracket fungi, which grow out of trees and look like UFOs that have crashed into the trunks. However, I discover a tract of pine forest, which is free of undergrowth, and discover more mushrooms than I can carry, many of them edible. I find a mother lode of Chanterelles among the pines. Also present is the fly agaric, the classic red and white toadstool that is certainly not for eating – just admiring, and perhaps for pixies to sit upon.

With bagfuls of various fungi, and a revived sense of adventure, we drive back to Kinnaird’s 18th century mansion for warming coffee and a review of our mushroom collection, more than half of which is sadly inedible.

There can be few finer settings for a night’s rest than Kinnaird. However we’re not staying here, but somewhere just as bonnie: the Ardeonaig Hotel on the banks of Loch Tay. Its remote location is convenient for some, because if you’re feeling flush you can arrange to fly in by seaplane.

Ardeonaig’s South African owner Pete Gottgens is an experienced restaurateur who's also head chef at the hotel. He encourages guests to pay a visit to the impressive kitchen, to assure them that standards are high.

My companions and I dine in the dimly-lit wine cellar. The tasting menu allows us, over several courses, to discover the quality of Scottish ingredients, such as venison, sea bass, smoked haddock, quail’s eggs and diver-caught scallops. Of course, Scotland is more famous for whisky than wine, so an excellent South African red or white accompanies each course.

In fact there’s a South African theme throughout the hotel. You can, as I did, stay in one of the luxurious rondawels - African style round huts with thatched roofs - in the grounds. The main hotel building, a former drovers inn, has snugs, lounges and studies to sit and read with a Scotch or cup of rooibos tea, if the weather's bad.

Half expecting to wake up to zebras, elephants and giraffes walking by my window, instead I am woken by the sound of the burn flowing past. The view is of the famous Munro Ben Lawers across the loch, its summit hidden by the early autumn mist.

Leaving Ardeonaig we head through the mountains and forests of the Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park on our way to the small, pretty town of Callander. From here we take a two-hour walk up to the top of Callander Crags, a peak of more than 1,000ft that sits on the Highland Boundary Fault, an ancient geological line dividing the Highlands and Lowlands.

In the distance, a sunburst catches Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. If you get here on a clear day you can also see the Forth bridges.

Callander is just the place for hungry hikers. Its main street is full of tearooms, coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants, and sweet shops. We call in to Mhor Fish, said to be the best chippie in Scotland. But lunch is going to have to wait. In fact, we'll have to help make it ourselves.

We're ushered upstairs to the demonstration room, a shiny new kitchen that hosts courses in fish preparation. Our teacher Maxine Clark gets us busy removing scallops from their shells and shucking oysters. The oysters are so fresh and delicious that to swallow them whole would be a waste, while I find the scallops to be just as appetising, both raw and when pan seared in butter. Once we have cleared up and our work is done, our reward is a massive baked halibut, prepared downstairs by the restaurant’s chef.

Completely satisfied, we leave Callander and head west, driving along the banks of Loch Lomond, over stunning mountain passes, and down to the west coast, with its long sea lochs. We check in to Creggans Inn, by Loch Fyne, a hotel on the Scottish Seafood Trail, where we enjoy more exceptional food, including venison, mussel soup and even more oysters.

In my room, I find the perfect recipe to forget urban life: turn on the squally, atmospheric sound of Radio 4, make a cup of tea, and enjoy with some shortbread biscuits while watching the sun setting over the loch.

Next morning Loch Fyne is covered with fog, but as we leave, the sun begins to poke through, and the glens become magical little worlds of their own. South of Loch Lomond is Glengoyne Distillery. Well, no Scottish culinary adventure is complete without even the weeest dram of whisky.

Back in the day, whisky was used as a form of payment, but when it became taxed, to fund wars against France, a number of illegal distilleries started to operate in the glen – the burn being an ideal source of water. Some however became licensed, Glengoyne among them, and while its geographical location might suggest otherwise, it just qualifies as a Highland distillery, as its water originates in the Highlands.

After a tour of the site, it’s our turn to try a spot of blending. In the sample room there’s a range of whiskies to choose from, and I invent something using more than a little Glengoyne mixed with a good amount of the darker, peatier malts from the islands.

And like everything I’ve tasted during the weekend, it's something to savour.


FURTHER INFORMATION:

Eat Scotland (www.eatscotland.com) features more than 600 restaurants across Scotland; food festivals and trails, and information on regional flavours.

Visit Scotland: www.visitscotland.com

Ardeonaig Hotel: www.ardeonaighotel.co.uk

The Creggans Inn: www.creggans-inn.co.uk

Kinnaird Estate: www.kinnairdestate.com

Forage Rangers: www.foragerangers.com

Mhor Fish: mhor.net/fish

Glengoyne Distillery: www.glengoyne.com