Islay, United Kingdom: Self-Guided Walking Tour

Looking for things to do in Islay? The available places on this page are actually in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, and include historic churches, local museums, industrial heritage, and notable buildings. Neywo has a free audio guide for Islay with 50 narrated places, so you can explore the area while hearing each story as you arrive.

What to See in Islay

Although Islay is listed as a destination in Scotland, the places covered here are located across North Lanarkshire. They offer a varied look at the region’s religious, industrial, and architectural heritage.

St Patricks Church

St Patricks Church is a local place of worship in North Lanarkshire. Its setting connects the church with the wider character of the area.

Longriggend and Meadowfield Church

On Main Street in Caldercruix, Longriggend and Meadowfield Church is also known as Caldercruix and Longriggend Parish Church. The building is a local architectural landmark.

Coltness Memorial Church

Coltness Memorial Church stands on Church Avenue in Newmains. This church building is one of the local landmarks to discover in the area.

Holy Family Roman Catholic Church

Holy Family, also known as Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, stands at the junction of Calder Road and Hope Street in Mossend. The building is a notable local religious structure.

St Mungo’s Church

St Mungo’s Church, also known as St Mungo’s Parish Church, is located on St Mungo’s Road in Cumbernauld. It provides another example of the area’s local church heritage.

Motherwell Cathedral

Motherwell Cathedral is formally known as the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Good Aid. This Roman Catholic cathedral in Motherwell is the seat of the Bishop of Motherwell and the mother church of the Diocese of Motherwell.

The cathedral was consecrated on 9 December 1900 and became a cathedral in 1948, following the creation of the Diocese of Motherwell. It was completely renovated in 1984 to meet the needs of modern Catholic liturgy, bringing a later transformation to the building’s earlier history.

Colzium Museum

Colzium Museum is a local museum in Kilsyth. It offers a chance to explore the heritage of this part of Scotland and the United Kingdom.

Cumbernauld Museum

Cumbernauld Museum is located in Cumbernauld. A visit adds local history to an exploration of the town and its surrounding area.

North Lanarkshire Heritage Centre

Near Motherwell town centre, the North Lanarkshire Heritage Centre—also known as Motherwell Heritage Centre—offers a place to connect with the history of the wider North Lanarkshire area. It is described as a four-star heritage centre.

Shotts Heritage Centre

Shotts Heritage Centre is a museum in Shotts dedicated to the heritage of the community. It is a useful stop for discovering the area’s local story.

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life brings together Lanarkshire’s industrial and social history. It stands on the site of the Victorian Summerlee Iron Works and the former Hydrocon Crane factory, showing how engineering, mining, steelworking, weaving, and farming shaped the area and the lives of local people.

The main exhibition hall began as the Hydrocon factory building and was later adapted for museum use. Inside, interactive displays and temporary exhibitions explore the region’s industries and communities.

The outdoor site extends across 22 acres and includes the remains of Summerlee Iron Works and the Monkland Canal, both scheduled monuments. Visitors can also find a mine and miners’ row, outdoor exhibits, railway steam locomotives, and preserved carriages from a Glasgow Class 311 dating from the 1960s. A short working heritage tram line is one of the museum’s distinctive experiences. The site also includes a large play area, café, gift shop, and sweet shop.

Craigmarloch Stables

A few hundred metres east of Kilsyth, along the Forth and Clyde Canal, Craigmarloch Stables recalls the area’s working history. The former horse stable was added to Scotland’s listed buildings in 2006 with Category B status, recognising the importance of this surviving structure in North Lanarkshire.

Motherwell

Motherwell is a town shaped by its industrial past and its role in modern North Lanarkshire. Historically known as “Steelopolis,” it was one of Scotland’s most important centres of steel production.

The steel industry gradually collapsed during the 1980s and 1990s, and the town has not fully recovered from that decline. Today, Motherwell is the headquarters of North Lanarkshire Council and the area’s administrative centre. It is also the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Motherwell, whose cathedral is Our Lady of Good Aid.

Motherwell’s names reflect its Scottish identity: Mitherwall in Scots and Tobar na Màthar in Scottish Gaelic.

Bedlay Castle

Bedlay Castle is a former defensive castle between Chryston and Moodiesburn in North Lanarkshire. Its origins date from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its wooded setting gives the quiet landmark a distinctive atmosphere.

The castle was placed in Scotland’s highest category of listed monuments, Category A, in 1971. Several ghost stories are associated with Bedlay Castle, adding an intriguing layer to its long history.

Cambusnethan House

Cambusnethan House, also known as Cambusnethan Priory, is one of Scotland’s few surviving early nineteenth-century country houses in the Neo-Gothic style. Today it stands as a ruin near Wishaw, in North Lanarkshire, within the valley of the River Clyde.

James Gillespie Graham designed the house, which was completed in 1820 for the Lockharts of Lee. It replaced an earlier manor house that burned down in March 1816; before that, the site held a Norman tower house.

The surviving building rises to two and three storeys, with turrets at each corner, a three-storey bow on the west elevation, and a massive square porch. Its Gothic Revival details include castellated roof lines, scrolled pinnacles, narrow pointed windows, drip moulds, ornate chimneys, cornices, and carved decoration. The Lockhart family coat of arms appears above the main entrance and is repeated in the balustrades of the main staircase.

Explore with Neywo’s Free Audio Guide

Neywo’s free Islay audio guide includes 50 narrated places. There are currently no tours listed with a set number of walks, bus or bike routes, kilometres, minutes, or narrated stops, so the guide is best described as an individual collection of narrated places rather than a scheduled route.

The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule. Narration is available in 11 languages. Download Neywo and explore Islay independently, listening as the places around you come into view.