Pennan is one of the most dramatic villages on the Scottish coast — a single row of whitewashed cottages wedged between a towering cliff and the North Sea on the Aberdeenshire coast. There is no room for the village to grow, and no real reason it should: its charm lies entirely in its impossible setting and its stubborn resistance to change.
Most people arrive because of the 1983 film Local Hero, which used Pennan as a location (though the famous red phone box seen in the film is a replica, installed by the council after fans kept asking where it was). The original scenes were shot elsewhere, but the village itself is authentic enough to make the pilgrimage worthwhile.
Today many of the cottages are holiday lets, which means the place fills up in summer and falls quiet in winter. Walk the single seafront lane, listen to the waves on the pebble beach beside the harbour, and visit the Pennan Inn — the village's only pub and your only option for food and drink within the village itself.