There is some debate as to the location of the geographical centre of Scotland. This is due to different methods of calculating the centre, and whether surrounding islands are included.

In 2002, the Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...

 calculated the centre using a centre of gravity method. The centre point was found to be at (56°49.0153′N 4°10.959′W). This is on a hillside near Loch Garry

Loch Garry

Loch Garry, , is 25 km north of Fort William, Lochaber, Scotland, and is 11 km long and 50 m deep. It is fed by waters from Loch Quoich 10 km upstream on the River Garry, and drains into Loch Oich in the Great Glen just 5 km downstream...

, between Dalwhinnie

Dalwhinnie

Dalwhinnie "Meeting Place" is a small village in the Scottish Highlands.-Location:Dalwhinnie sits at an altitude of 351 m. It is one of the coldest villages in the UK, having an average annual temperature of 6.5oC, making it suitable for winter walking and mountaineering.It is north of Drumochter,...

 and Blair Atholl

Blair Atholl

Blair Atholl is a small town in Perthshire, Scotland, built about the confluence of the Rivers Tilt and Garry in one of the few areas of flat land in the midst of the Grampian Mountains. The Gaelic place-name Blair, from blàr, 'field, plain', refers to this location...

 and close to the A9 road and the railway line

Highland Main Line

The Highland Main Line is a railway line in Scotland. It is long and runs through the Scottish Highlands linking a series of small towns and villages with Perth at one end and Inverness at the other. Today, services between Inverness and Edinburgh, Glasgow and London use the line...

.

Nearby, it is claimed that the centre lies a few miles from the village

Village

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 of Newtonmore

Newtonmore

Newtonmore is a village in the Highland council area of Scotland. It has a population of about 1000. The village is only a few miles from a location that is claimed to be the exact geographical centre of Scotland...

, Badenoch

Badenoch

Badenoch is a traditional district which today forms part of Badenoch and Strathspey, an area of Highland Council, in Scotland, bounded on the north by the Monadhliath Mountains, on the east by the Cairngorms and Braemar, on the south by Atholl and the Grampians, and on the west by Lochaber...

. It is marked by a stone set into a wall. http://www.highlandhostel.co.uk/centre_scot_stone1.jpg

The Ordnance Survey calculated that the centre of mainland Scotland is at (56°39′33.86"N 4°0′40.37"W). The point is 5 km east of the mountain of Schiehallion

Schiehallion

Schiehallion is a prominent mountain in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Schiehallion has a rich botanical life, interesting archaeology, and a unique place in scientific history for an 18th-century experiment in 'weighing the world'...

, which is sometimes claimed to be at the centre of Scotland.

See also

• Extreme points of Scotland
  Extreme points of Scotland
  This is a list of the extreme points and extreme elevations in Scotland.The northernmost and westernmost points of Scotland coincide with those of the UK .-General:...
  
  
• Geographical centre of Europe
  Geographical centre of Europe
  The location of the geographical centre of Europe depends on the definition of the borders of Europe, mainly whether remote islands are included to define the extreme points of Europe, and on the method of calculating the final result...
  
  
• Centre points of the United Kingdom
  Centre points of the United Kingdom
  There has long been debate over the exact location of the geographical centre of the United Kingdom, and its constituent countries, due to the complexity and method of the calculation, such as whether to include offshore islands, and the fact that erosion will cause the position to change over time...