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18th August 1773 saw Samuel Johnson and James Boswell set out on their three month tour of the Highlands and the Inner Hebrides.

Boswell enticed his famous English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland.

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh, like many young men he longed to visit the bright lights of London and in 1760 he deserted the family home to live in the English capital for a few months. It was during his second stay in 1762-63 that he met his literary hero and model, the poet, essayist and dictionary maker Dr. Samuel Johnson. In August 1763 Boswell embarked upon a 2½ year Grand Tour of Europe, during which he met many notable men and women, including Voltaire and Rousseau. On returning to Scotland he practised law as an advocate. During this time he made occasional visits London to spend time with Dr Johnson and others of his circle, including Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke. He was also on familiar terms with David Hume, Adam Smith and other leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Johnston and Boswell set off less than 30 years after the '45 Uprising, when whisky was still distilled illegally, roads were scarce and travel was by foot, bone-jangling carriage, horseback or over very turbulent seas in a rickety boat.

Their extraordinary journey to the Highlands and the Hebrides during an autumnal season of relentless rain and storms, took Johnson - plump, partially deaf and blind and who had rarely travelled outside of London - on a grand Scottish tour which led to two of the earliest travel books and paved the way for centuries of tourists who would also explore the nation’s wild islands and highland

While for the then 32-year-old Boswell there was a chance to witness Johnson up close for nearly three months, providing a wealth of material for his admired biography, Life of Samuel Johnson. The travel journal was a massive hit and a humorous account of their journey.

Boswell was Scots to his roots and is very defensive about the Scots and Scottishness, while Johnson has this very English take on it all. These two things fuel the humour, Johnson is like this English bulldog and Boswell is like a Scottish terrier. Together they are a hoot! Add to that the facts that as you would expect from a Scotsman, Boswell was a heavy drinker and Johnson was teetotal, which leads to all kinds of escapades. It’s like 18th century Laurel and Hardy.

Boswell, quoted their first conversation in the biography, Life of Samuel Johnson, saying: “Mr Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it”. To which Johnson replied: “That, Sir, I find, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help.”

It set the scene for a friendship driven by verbal sparring, with Johnson’s deprecating remarks about Scots robustly foiled by Boswell’s defence of homeland.

Their travels began in mid-August at Boyd’s Inn in Edinburgh, where the cleanliness dismayed Johnson. Boswell wrote: “He asked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon which the waiter, with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of sugar, and put it into it. The Doctor, in indignation, threw it out of the window”.

The pair then travelled up the east coast, stopping at St Andrews to indulge their interest in John Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots, Following the coast towards Aberdeenshire, a bit like today’s NC500 tourists plotting their route, they took an anti-clockwise course along the Moray Coast to Inverness and then to the Western Isles.

At times their journey resembled a lengthy pub crawl as they noted the quality of the inns and the food.

In Montrose, Johnson noted: “At our inn we did not find a reception such as we thought proportionate to the commercial importance of the place; but Mr Boswell desired me to observe the innkeeper was an Englishman, and I then defended him as well as I could.” Dundee, it was noted, was “dirty, despicable”. They even recorded their first taste of Arbroath smokies.

Having travelled through Glen Shiel, the pair arrived at the inn at Glenelg. Often praised today, Boswell and Johnson gave it the equivalent of a one-star TripAdvisor review. Having arrived “wearing and peevish”, they discovered “no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine. We did not express much satisfaction.”

The Highland terrain posed even greater stress. Dangerous and often impassable except on foot, they were often in remote spots, miles from inns or shelter or ankle deep in a peat bog. Nevertheless, they trudged on through stormy weather and with Johnson often suffering from colds, increasing deafness and seasickness on the journeys between the islands.

The trip from Coll to Skye was undertaken during a vicious storm, with Boswell fretting over whether the boat might sink or explode, and troubled that he couldn’t understand the sailors’ Gaelic! Johnson was no great fan of the language, describing it as “the rude speech of a barbarous people, who had few thoughts to express, and were content, as they conceived grossly, to be grossly understood”.

But in Skye, they were delighted to meet Flora MacDonald, and slept in the same room that Bonnie Prince Charlie had slept in. “Both were over the moon because they were besotted with the story,” he wrote.

Don’t judge Johnson on his dislike of the Gaelic language though, the pair told of finding the Highlands still occupied by military garrisons, cleared by immigration and spoke of the suppression of Highland culture and oppression of the clans.

The isle of Raasay turned out to be a favourite spot, where the pair enjoyed the clan chief’s hospitality and a raucous ceilidh, with Boswell dancing a jig on the flat summit of Dun Caan. Both felt that in Raasay they had come close to authentic old Gaelic culture and way of life.

By October 1773 they were in the Saracen Head Inn in Glasgow’s Gallowgate, revelling in a roaring coal fire and conversation with professors from Glasgow University.

The trip would come to a sorry end, however, at Boswell’s family’s Ayrshire home at Johnson and Boswell’s father had an enormous row; they were total opposites in religious and political beliefs,

Johnson was a kind of father figure to Boswell. He knew Boswell could be a bit out of hand, but he also knew he was a real literary talent.”

Three days!