The Map of Hogwarts: location

This section examines the conflicting evidence as to the exact location of Hogwarts. By "exact" I of course mean the approximate area it would probably be in if it were real: I don't suppose it's based very closely on an actual place.

Knowing the likely location of Hogwarts, besides being interesting in itself, also enables us to know things like the likely time of sunset at Hogwarts. This in turn can be used to estimate more local details about the layout and orientation of the village and the castle grounds.

What we know or can deduce about where Hogwarts is situated:

'You were seen,' he hissed, showing them the headline: FLYING FORD ANGLIA MYSTIFIES MUGGLES. He began to read aloud: 'Two Muggles in London, convinced they saw an old car flying over the Post Office tower ... at noon in Norfolk, Mrs Hetty Bayliss, while hanging out her washing ... Mr Angus Fleet, of Peebles, reported to police ... ' [CoS ch. #05; p. 62]

The weather remained undecided as they travelled further and further north. [OotP ch. #10; p. 176]

We know that Hogwarts is in Scotland. That is to say, we know that it is in a mountainous area of mainland Britain, which means either Dartmoor, Wales, the north of England or Scotland. The Hogwarts Express heads north from London and continues to head broadly north for several hours, which rules out Dartmoor and Wales, unless you assume that somewhere in the north it for some reason performs a sharp U-turn and travels south again - for which there is no evidence.

[It can't do more than head broadly north, incidentally, because Britain is angled in such a way that a train which headed due north from London would end up in the sea somewhere near Hull.]

Whilst following the route of the Express quite closely, the flying Ford Anglia passes over Peebles, a small town in south-east Scotland. This means that if Hogwarts were in the north of England the train would have to double-back on itself somewhere past Peebles and head south again, and there's no suggestion that it does so - so Hogwarts too must be in Scotland. But where in Scotland?

Please note that the new school year will begin on September the first. The Hogwarts Express will leave from King's Cross station, platform nine and three-quarters, at eleven o'clock. [PoA ch. #01; p. 16]

Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep-purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down. [PS ch. #06; p. 82/83]

[cut] the sky became steadily darker. Stars were blossoming in the blackness. [cut]
When they flew back beneath the clouds a little while later, they had to squint through the darkness for a landmark they knew. [cut]
Silhouetted on the dark horizon, high on the cliff over the lake, stood the many turrets and towers of Hogwarts castle. [CoS ch. #05; p. 58]

Harry was sitting with his forehead pressed against the train window, trying to get a first distant glimpse of Hogwarts, but it was a moonless night and the rain-streaked window was grimy. [OotP ch. #10; p. 176]

Finally the train emerged from yet another long misty stretch into a red sunset, and Slughorn looked around, blinking in the twilight.
'Good gracious, it's getting dark already! I didn't notice that they'd lit the lamps! You'd better go and change into your robes, all of you. [HBP ch. #07; p. 140/141]

The Hogwarts Express leaves London at 11am (by British Summer Time, presumably, since they are catching the train more-or-less in the Muggle world), heads north and travels until it is almost dark. That's definitely sunset-dark, not just cloud-cover dark, because in CoS they can see stars from the flying Ford, in OotP we are specifically told that it is night when they arrive, and in HBP we see that the sun is setting just before they arrive.

Sunset in Britain on 1^st September, when the train travels, would be about 7:45pm BST in London, 8:15pm BST in the Highlands, becoming seriously dark about forty-five minutes later. In a mountainous area sunset and darkness will arrive somewhat earlier, because the mountains cut into the path of the sun and interrupt it before it reaches the true horizon, and we known Hogwarts is surrounded by mountains, but even so we know the journey takes nine, maybe nine-and-a-half hours.

In the heyday of steam, British Muggle passenger steam trains used to average 80mph - but if the Hogwarts Express travelled north at 80mph for nine hours in a fairly straight line it would wind up in the Shetlands (a moderately remote group of islands in the North Sea, for those who don't already know).

We know that the Hogwarts Express passes by the edge of Norfolk about an hour after setting out. That is to say, we are told that the Flying Ford, following the route of the Express, was visible to someone in Norfolk at noon. Norfolk occupies the northern half of a big bulge of land which sticks right out eastwards into the North Sea. Anything which entered Norfolk and then travelled even roughly north would wind up in the water, so the train cannot actually go through Norfolk, unless it describes a fairly large, looping detour. Rather, it must pass along the edge of Norfolk, where it joins central England.

If you draw a line roughly north from London, there is an area of the north-west boundary of Norfolk, between Welney in the south and Gunthorpe Road in the north, which runs roughly parallel and quite close to that line. If you imagine a route leading more or less northwards from London but drifting slightly to the east, therefore, it's possible for it to pass fairly close by the north-western boundary of Norfolk, so that the flying car overhead could be visible to someone over the Norfolk boundary.

The closest point to London in that area of Norfolk is Welney, which is around sixty-eight miles from King's Cross, giving us a speed for the Hogwarts Express of around 65-70mph. This is slow for a steam train, but not so slow as to be incredible, and it fits comfortably with the descriptions of the English end of the journey.

The Hogwarts Express moved steadily north and the scenery outside the window became wilder and darker while the clouds overhead thickened. [cut]
At one o'clock the plump witch with the food trolley arrived at the compartment door. [PoA ch. #05; p. 62/63]

Mid-afternoon, just as it had started to rain, blurring the rolling hills outside the window, [PoA ch. #05; p. 63]

The train rattled onwards, speeding them out into open country. It was an odd, unsettled sort of day; one moment the carriage was full of sunlight and the next they were passing beneath ominously grey clouds. [OotP ch. #10; p. 169]

In his mind’s eye Harry seemed to see the scarlet steam engine as he and Ron had once followed it by air, shimmering between fields and hills, a rippling scarlet caterpillar. [DH ch. #12; p. 187]

Leaving London the train passes quite rapidly into open country. It comes first to green fields, but by two hours out from London the scenery is already noticeably "wilder and darker". It passes through moorland, an area of little traditional villages and then a great city, at which point it is still well over five hours away from journey's end ("several hours later" plus "hours later still", plus a bit more for the sky to get darker, plus "a little while later"). At mid-afternoon, it is in an area of rolling hills, and at an unknown time thereafter it passes through or near Peebles in south-east Scotland.

If we assume the train to be going at about 65mph, with a detour via the edge of Norfolk, it would pass by Norfolk at noon, as we know it did. By 1pm it should be somewhere in Lincolnshire - which, whilst not exactly bleak, is noticeably less lush than the home counties, and is known for its rolling hills - and heading into Nottinghamshire.

If, rather than going in a dead-straight line, we allow the train to weave about a bit - as indeed it must do to even touch on Norfolk - then shortly after Lincolnshire it could pass over the moorlands and the little traditional towns and villages of South and West Yorkshire. The city the flying car passed over five or six hours before reaching Hogwarts could be either Sheffield, which if the train is doing around 65mph it should pass at about 2:30pm, or Leeds, which it should pass just before 3pm. It would pass by Peebles at around 5pm. That all fits quite comfortably, and suggests the train is indeed averaging around 65mph.

It's possible that the train crosses over the Pennines (the wide spine of hills running up the middle of northern England) in the vicinity of Sheffield and proceeds up the west coast, but in that case it's difficult to see any reason why it would ever go very near Peebles. It seems more likely that it goes up the east side of the Pennines and then passes through the Pentlands (the range of hills on the Scottish side of the border with England) by going up the Tweed valley and past Peebles.

Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep-purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down. [cut]
A voice echoed through the train: 'We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. [PS ch. #06; p. 82/83]

       'Can't be much further, can it?' croaked Ron, hours later still, as the sun started to sink into their floor of cloud, staining it a deep pink. 'Ready for another check on the train?'
       It was still right below them, winding its way past a snow-capped mountain. It was much darker beneath the canopy of clouds. [cut]
       [cut] the sky became steadily darker. Stars were blossoming in the blackness. [cut]
       When they flew back beneath the clouds, a little while later, they had to squint through the darkness for a landmark they knew.
       'There!' Harry shouted [CoS ch. #05; p. 58]

True, there was little of the journey left – Hogsmeade Station had to be less than half an hour away, judging by the wildness of the scenery flashing by the windows – [HBP ch. #07; p. 141/141]

At 65mph for around nine hours, the Hogwarts Express should travel a little under six hundred miles, although of course we don't know if its speed is constant. Six hundred miles in a fairly straight line would take the express right into the Caithness and Sutherland area in the far north, but there's a very large problem with that.

Caithness and Sutherland and the West Highlands generally are pretty wild and bare (apart from some small pockets near the coast, of which more anon). We know that, yes, Hogwarts is generally in fairly wild country, and some considerable time before it reaches Hogwarts the train passes near a mountain which is high enough to be snow-capped on 1^st September. However, we are clearly told that the scenery only becomes really wild less than half an hour - so around twenty-five to thirty miles - before the train reaches Hogwarts. Were Hogwarts truly in the far north, the train should have been passing through wild country for over a hundred miles by that point.

So, we know Hogwarts is in wild country, but only about twenty-five miles into it. That means that if it's in the Highlands, it's in a position which is still fairly near a calmer, more agricultural landscape.

Note that it is possible to halve the speed of the train, if you say that Harry caught the Hogwarts Express by Muggle time (which on 1^st September means British Summer Time), but the Prophet's idea of noon is based on Greenwich Mean Time. That would give a two-hour lapse between the train leaving King's Cross and passing close to Norfolk, and a speed of around 35mph - about that of a mid Victorian steam train. That would mean they reached Peebles around 7:30pm (assuming the train travels in a fairly straight line), with just about time to make it to the Galloway Hills by soon after nightfall, passing into wild country ten to fifteen miles before arriving at the castle.

As far as the geography of Hogwarts itself goes, with its lake and its forest and its surrounding mountains, we can probably rule out the Buchan area and Caithness as too flat, and the Borders and Central Belt as too near London (assuming a speed of 65mph), far too crowded and not mountainous enough. The Borders are high and hilly, as you can see from the accompanying map, but they are smooth and rolling and not high enough to count as mountains (i.e. not over 2,000ft above sea level).

That leaves us with Hogwarts being in one of three places. It could be in the West Highlands, which extend all the way up the west side of Scotland from Loch Lomond north to Sutherland. It could be in the Grampian Highlands/Cairngorms/Strathspey area, which occupies a swathe of east-central Scotland. Or it could be in the Galloway Hills in the south-west.

[N.B. There seems to be a lot of dispute among map-makers as to how the mountains of Scotland are named. Some map-makers class all the mountains in the whole central block of Scotland which lies between the Highland Boundary fault and the Great Glen fault as being the Grampian Highlands or Grampian Mountains. Some consider the western fringes of this block to be the southern end of the West Highlands. The Cairngorm Mountains, in and around the Strathspey area, are sometimes considered to be the northern range of the Grampian Highlands, and sometimes considered to be a separate group. For the purposes of this essay, I am treating the western edge of this central block as part of the West Highlands, and the Cairngorms as part of the Grampians.]

In the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, it is stated that Sirius Black has been sighted in Dufftown and Hermione replies "Dufftown? That's not far from here." Dufftown is in the Cairngorms and if we accept this statement from the film, that would place Hogwarts in the Cairngorms too. However, the book says only "... they reckon Sirius Black's been sighted [cut] Not too far from here [cut] It was a Muggle who saw him." [PoA ch. #07; p. 96]. So the association with Dufftown belongs only to the films, and does not fit with the films' simultaneous presentation of Hogwarts as accessible via the iconic Glenfinnan Viaduct.

Glenfinnan is in the far west very close to the sea, and Dufftown is about forty miles north and eighty-seven miles east of it. To get from the vicinity of Glenfinnan to the vicinity of Dufftown you would expect to travel south-west to north-east along the great valley called Strathspey, alongside the A86, A9 and A95 roads. Alternatively you could just head due east, ignoring the roads and bumping up and down over a series of mountain ranges, but in that case you would enter very wild country about eighty miles (well over an hour's journey) before reaching Hogwarts.

Even if you travel from Glenfinnan to the area near Dufftown via Strathspey, your problem is that Glenfinnan's proximity to a very jagged coastline means that it is almost impossible to approach Glenfinnan overland coming from the west, unless your starting-point is Mallaig on the west coast. Coming from the south, you either come up the east side of the country and head south-west down Strathspey, in which case you pass by Dufftown a hundred miles before reaching Glenfinnan, or you come up the west side and arrive at a geographical T-junction in the vicinity of Fort William, with Glenfinnan about ten miles due west of you and Dufftown eighty-five miles north-east along Strathspey. To come broadly from the south and pass over the Glenfinnan Viaduct before reaching the Dufftown area, you would have to come to that T-junction and either turn left, travel west across the viaduct heading towards Mallaig and then turn 180° round and head back across it going east, or leave the route of the Muggle line and describe a pointless loop around the countryside near Mallaig - weaving about wildly in order to avoid the many long thin lochs with which the area is cleft - in order to approach the viaduct from the western, Mallaig side.

Since the two assumptions in the films - that Hogwarts is accessed via the Glenfinnan Viaduct and that it is near Dufftown - cannot both be true without assuming a pointless digression with no purpose other than to pass over the pretty viaduct, we can discount the information from the films. This doesn't necessarily mean that Hogwarts isn't in the Cairngorms/near Dufftown, nor that it isn't accessible via the Glenfinnan Viaduct - but it can't be both, so their appearance in the films carries no canonical weight.

In the weeks that followed he did seem to be getting paler and thinner [PS ch. #14; p. 167]

       'Hermione, the exams are ages away.'
       'Ten weeks,' Hermione snapped. [cut]
       Unfortunately the teachers seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Hermione. They piled so much homework on them that the Easter holidays weren't nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones. [PS ch. #14; p. 167]

In general, the weather around Hogwarts doesn't really fit the Grampians/Cairngorms, where the temperature has been known to drop as low as -27° C. Yes, the wizards could be using weather charms - but if they were, you'd think the weather at Hogwarts would be better than it is. And conversely if the weather at Hogwarts is au naturelle, it's not bad enough for the Grampians. We've seen some heavy rain at Hogwarts, but I don't think we've ever seen an outright blizzard or people being snowed into the castle for days at a time, which you would expect to be a fairly regular occurrence if it was in the Grampians, especially the Cairngorms.

We cannot absolutely rule out the Grampians/Cairngorms on climate grounds, because there is at least one pocket of very mild, temperate climate in the Strathspey valley, taking in Carrbridge about sixteen miles south-east of Inverness, and Grantown-on-Spey which is about eight miles east nor' east of Carrbridge. Dufftown, indeed, is twenty miles north-east of Grantown-on-Spey.

However, we see that trees come into leaf very early at Hogwarts: we know this because we see a beech tree in leaf at the end of March. [Harry has to peer to see Snape and Quirrell through the leaves. A couple of weeks later it is still not yet Easter and Hermione says that the exams - which are normally held in early June - are ten weeks away.] This suggests that Hogwarts is in the west of Scotland, which gets the best of the light in the spring and has a warmer, wetter, less windy climate than the east coast.

'My son, Draco, is home for his Easter holidays. If that is Harry Potter, he will know.' [DH ch. #23; p. 370]

'Bill and Fleur's,' said Ron. 'Shell Cottage on the outskirts of Tinworth!' [DH ch. #23; p. 379]

He walked into the little kitchen, to the basin beneath a window overlooking the sea. Dawn was breaking over the horizon, shell pink and faintly gold [DH ch. #24; p. 390]

[cut] he saw, for mere seconds, a vision of the main street in Hogsmeade, still dark, because it was so much further north. [DH ch. #24; p. 402]

Voldemort was at the gates of Hogwarts; Harry could see him standing there, and see, too, the lamp bobbing in the pre-dawn, coming closer and closer. [DH ch. #24; p. 404]

[cut] the sun was barely visible over the horizon as he glided alongside Snape, up through the grounds towards the lake. [DH ch. #24; p. 404]

'We've told Bill and Fleur we're leaving tomorrow,' [cut]
Though he would miss Bill, Fleur, Luna and Dean, not to mention the home comforts they had enjoyed over the last few weeks [DH ch. #26; p. 420]

Harry slept badly that night. [cut]
It was a relief when six o'clock arrived and they could slip out of their sleeping bags, dress in the semi-darkness, [cut] The dawn was chilly, but there was little wind now that it was May. [DH ch. #26; p. 421]

There is another reason to prefer a location in the far west. In DH, the Trio listen to the resistance radio programme, which we are told is happening in March. They are then captured and taken to Malfoy Manor, where we are told that Draco is home for his Easter holidays. Easter Sunday that year was actually on 12^th April. If that held true for the wizarding world then the scene at Malfoy Manor must have been at the very end of March - two weeks before Easter Sunday, and at the very beginning of the Easter holiday.

Even if the date of Easter in the wizarding world is different from real-time, the earliest Easter Sunday ever is is March 22^nd, just after the vernal equinox. The scene at Malfoy Manor could be up to two weeks before Easter Sunday, of course: but just before they leave Shell Cottage at the beginning of May, Harry thinks of their stay there as "the last few weeks". This sounds more as though they arrived at the end of March or beginning of April, rather than in mid-March.

So, they are taken to Malfoy Manor almost certainly no earlier than the vernal equinox on March 20^th, and probably considerably later. The following morning, Harry is at Shell Cottage, which we know to be in Cornwall, in the far south-west of Britain. He watches the sun rise and then has a vision of Hogsmeade, still in darkness. The sun does not rise at Hogwarts until Voldemort has had time to walk (or fly) up from Hogsmeade to the castle, wait for Snape to let him in and then walk up through the grounds.

Harry thinks that this delay is because Hogwarts is further north but in fact that's nonsense. The scene takes place on or up to around twelve days after the vernal equinox, and between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the sun rises earlier in the north than the south.

We have to account for the time-lag as best we can by saying it's due to the mountains around Hogwarts, but we also want Hogwarts to be as far west as we can get it. If Hogwarts were in the east it would make the problem that much worse, because you would then expect the sun to rise earlier at Hogwarts than at Tinworth because it was east of it, as well as because it was north of it. The difference in sunrise-time between the east side of the Grampians and the west side of the West Highlands is as much as twelve minutes - it makes a major difference. However high the mountains around Hogwarts are, we really have to have Hogwarts in the west - either Galloway or the West Highlands - for that scene to make any sense at all, and for it to be even vaguely feasible that the sun could rise about a quarter of an hour later at Hogwarts than in Cornwall at that time of year.

Also, although the Grampian/Strathspey area is mostly very cold and snowy in mid-winter, it is unlikely to have snow-capped mountains on 1^st September. There was a snowfall at the very end of September in Strathspey in 2003, and at that time amateur weatherman Bill Cuthbert, who runs the website www.strathspeyweather.co.uk, was quoted as saying: "According to my archive records there has not been a single record of snow in September in the Strathspey area since the data started in 1966 although there were records of snow as late as June." There are some semi-permanent snow-fields in the Cairngorms but even these would not usually persist right through August, and they tend to be pockets of snow in gulleys, not something which could be said to cap a mountain. The exception is Ben Nevis, at the north-western end of the Grampians, which often has snow persisting into September and occasionally all year round - but again, only in one part of one gully, not a cap.

[N.B. No mountain peaks in Britain are high enough to cross the permanent snow line.]

In 2010, a flurry of powder snow fell on the tops of the Cairngorms on Sunday 29^th August, affecting only peaks above 3,500ft. The Daily Mail reporting this on 2^nd September, said that it was the earliest snowfall for twenty years (i.e., since 1990, before Harry started at Hogwarts) and quoted Geoff Monk of Mountain Weather Info Service as saying that he would not be surprised if the tops of Glen Nevis (i.e. Ben Nevis and surrounding peaks) had also had some snow over the weekend. He was reported as saying that snow in August was "not normal, but it's not unheard of either. It is something that happens about once every two decades."

If we rate the Grampians as being the least likely, then, due to being too far east and not snowy enough, that leaves us with two major options: Galloway or the West Highlands.

In favour of Hogwarts being in Galloway:

The most striking evidence that Hogwarts, and more particularly Hogsmeade, is in Galloway is the name itself. If Hogsmeade means what it sounds like - "meadow of hogs" - then it is a strikingly English name: the Scottish equivalent would be Hogsleigh. That the village has an English name suggests that it is in the south, close to the border with England, and the Galloway area is especially known for its mixed-origin place-names. The fact that the lake is always called the lake and not the loch also suggests that Hogwarts lies very close to England. Hengist of Woodcroft
Founder of Hogsmeade
Medieval, dates unknown
Driven away from his home by Muggle persecutors, Hengist is supposed to have settled in Scotland where he founded the village of Hogsmeade. Some say the Three Broomsticks Inn used to be his home. [Famous Wizards n° 11]

We have been told that the village was founded by an Englishman, Hengist of Woodcroft, so he might have given it an English name even in the Highlands. However, we know that the village must have been founded at least a century or two after the school, since Hengist was "of Woodcroft" and there seems to have been no Woodcroft in England prior to the 12^th century. If the village got its name at that point you'd expect it to be called after the school/castle, just as you commonly find villages which grew up next to a pre-existing castle have names such as Castle Douglas and Castle Huntly. That suggests that the name predates the school - and therefore predates Hengist by at least a couple of centuries, so there's no known reason why the village should have an English name if it is in the Highlands, far from the border with England.

What might the name of the school mean - apart from being the name of a plant (the hogwort, Croton capitatus) used to make laxatives, and an embarrassingly silly word that JK chose in order to lull readers into a false sense of security that this was going to be a nice, light-hearted story? The writer excessivelyperky has suggested that "hog" is a corruption of howe or hough, an ancient burial mound, which is quite likely.

My own idea - bearing in mind that Wart is a Mediaeval pet-name for people called Arthur, that JK must be very well aware of the lion-shaped hill in Edinburgh which is called Arthur's Seat, and that the Arthurian legends include tales of King Arthur slaying a magical boar - is that the hill on which the school is situated is shaped somewhat like a pig, the name Hogwarts means "boar of Arthur" and Hogsmeade means "the meadow of the boar." And of course, if the "hog" part is a corruption of "howe" the "wart" might still be Arthur - Arthur's Howe, or tomb.

If the "warts" element of the name is indeed a reference to Arthur that tends to suggest a location which is not much further north than Loch Lomond, and probably in the west - that being the heart of Arthurian country in Scotland. [Galloway is the kingdom of Rheged named in the Arthurian myths.]

"Warts" could also be a corruption of "wort," which means either cabbages or the fermented mash from which beer is produced - either of which might be fed to pigs. That would tend to suggest an area of pig-farming and either vegetable-farming or brewing - none of them very likely in the Highlands, but quite possible in the more benign environment of Galloway.

The very early spring suggests the south-west, not just the west, although that's not absolute: there are at least two places on the coastal edge of the West Highlands which have sub-tropical microclimates.

ian murgatroydGeograph

Galloway, although it has no very high mountains, does have the Galloway Hills, an extensive range of mountains in the 2,000-3,000ft range, described by www.walkingworld.com as "awesome hills, remote and elusive, rewarding determined walkers with breathtaking views of extensive moorland, shimmering lonely hill lochs, silvery burns and gushing waterfalls, deep glens and imposing rock outcrops." Many of these Galloway mountains fall within the Forest Park - a suitable area in which to conceal the Forbidden Forest.

Anthony O\'NeilGeograph

Gordon HattonGeograph

Callum BlackGeograph

Coniferous forests in the Highlands tend to be man-made and regularly harvested. Deciduous ones are usually heavily biased towards birch, alder and ash. As shown in the section on the Forbidden Forest, the woods at Hogwarts are predominately deciduous, yet there is no mention of any of these typically Highland trees.

Galloway, on the other hand, does have at least one really dense, gnarled, ancient wood resembling the Forbidden Forest, at Castramont, three miles north of Gatehouse of Fleet.

Although snow in Galloway on 1^st September is even less likely than in the Cairngorms, if Hogwarts is in Galloway, the Hogwarts Express presumably takes the Ayr/Dumfries line before turning off onto its own private branch-line. This would mean that not very long before it reached Hogwarts it would pass about five miles to the west of the mountain Ballencleuch Law and ten miles west of Beattock Summit (which is not actually a mountain but it is quite an impressive hill, as hills go), both in the Lowther Hills south of Glasgow. These two have their own private weather system and I am assured by someone who used to walk there that they sometimes have snow on the top in August. This could be what Harry and Ron saw, from the vantage point of their flying car.

The Galloway Hills form a fairly small enclave which fits with the idea that the train only enters really wild, mountainous country less than half an hour before reaching the school. The long journey-time can be explained in part by the fact that we know the train passes near Peebles, about twenty miles due south of Edinburgh, and from there it would have to turn and head about seventy-five miles west-south-west to reach the Galloway Hills. This is especially true if we assume that a conflict between GMT and BST times meant that it in fact took two hours for the train to reach Norfolk, and that it travelled at around 35mph.

We are told that Hogwarts is concealed from Muggles by disguising it as a ruin. If the ruin is anything like the size and appearance of the original, a ruined castle of any great size is rather more likely, and hence would invite less comment, in Galloway than in the Highlands. That is, there are or were three massive castles in the Highlands, Forts William, Augustus and George, but they are only a few hundred years old, and the first two have been built over and their remains incorporated into villages, whilst Fort George is still a working military barracks. Those aside, castles in the mainland Highlands are usually single towers or fortified family houses.

Against Hogwarts being in Galloway:

To get to Galloway the train would turn left at or near Peebles and head a long way into the south-west. Even so, and even with a certain amount of deviation and detours, it's difficult to see how the route from London to the Galloway Hills could be more than four hundred and fifty miles, unless the train takes a long ramble through wizard-space. This is not really long enough if the train was averaging about 6-705mph (because since it passed by Norfolk at noon). From Norfolk to Galloway via Peebles, even with a lot of deviation, is still going to be well under four hundred miles so the train would have to have taken eight hours to cover that distance, at about 48mph. Whilst that's not impossible, it's very hard to explain, given that Muggle steam-trains routinely travelled at 80mph.

It's possible that the train simply stops at several stations on the way to pick up more passengers, and sits for about half an hour at each one, which would enable it to be travelling at a reasonable speed when in motion and yet still take a long time to arrive. But there's no indication of any long halts - or any halts at all - in the books.

We can get round this if we assume that the train left London at 11am BST and passed by the Norfolk border at noon GMT - i.e. two hours later - giving it a speed of around 35mph. That makes Galloway a much better fit time-wise but makes it even harder to explain why wizards, who can make a super-fast dimension-hopping bus, would nevertheless be using a super-slow, primitive Victorian 35mph steam-train.

The Galloway Hills are not quite as far west as the western side of the West Highlands, and so are harder to reconcile with the late sunrise at Hogwarts. It also seems likely that JK Rowling herself intends Hogwarts to be in the Highlands.

In favour of Hogwarts being in the West Highlands:

I certainly have the impression that Rowling herself means it to be in the Highlands, and that's why there's a map of Argyll on the wall. Perhaps it was this one:

... and the Fat Lady was hiding in one of the little decorative vignettes in the corners, where there are already a tiny human figure and a ship for her to sail on.

Although the West Highlands are generally very windswept they can also be very sunny, and the coastal fringes are warmed by the North Atlantic Drift, an extension of the Gulf Stream. There are sub-tropical micro-climates at Inverewe on the coast of Wester Ross in the North West Highlands, and on the island of Gigha in Kintyre in the South West Highlands. So long as Hogwarts is near the sea (which might be just on the far side of the mountains, for all we know), it is possible to explain its comparatively mild climate and very early spring by saying that it too is in its own warm West Highland micro-climate.

If we imagine that the Hogwarts Express runs up the east coast of Scotland, passing by Dundee and Aberdeen and right round the coastal edge of the fertile farmlands of the Buchan before entering the Highlands somewhere west or south-west of Inverness, it is possible to end up with a total journey from London to Hogwarts in excess of six hundred miles at a speed of 65-70mph.

The fact that there is a map of Argyllshire - most probably, a fairly old map - on the wall may mean that JK visualises Hogwarts as lying within the boundaries of Argyll (old spelling, Argyle) as it was constituted prior to the 1974 county-reorganisation, and southern Argyll around Loch Lomond does have some Arthurian connections. However, this creates a number of problems, owing to its position.

Chris WimbushGeograph

If you come at Argyll from the south, you can end up well into the Highlands and still be only about twenty-five miles from softer country, but you have the same problem as with Galloway: you're less than a hundred miles on from Peebles, which makes it hard to explain how the train could take over nine hours to get there from London. If you go round the top of the Grampians and come at Argyll from the north - or even go right through the Grampians and come at it from the east - you can get a feasibly long journey-time, and if you are approaching the north of Argyll from the north you can if you want have the train crossing the Glenfinnan Viaduct, but then you are at least forty miles into wild country, which doesn't fit with the speed of the train and Harry thinking that if they are in wild country, they are less than half an hour from Hogwarts.

Sarah CharlesworthGeograph

K AGeograph

Alternatively, we can have Hogwarts embedded deeply in the true wild Highlands, probably somewhere in the Kyle of Lochalsh, Kintail or Strathglass area, and yet the train have come right round the coastal, agricultural fringes of the Grampians, only passing into really high, wild country about twenty-five miles ago.

John S RossGeograph

Better yet, in order to reach the Lochalsh, Kintail and Strathglass area, the train would pass near Glen Affric, where there is a peak called Tom a' Chòinich which does sometimes have snow on top at the end of August. [I came across a scientific article on the net which mentioned Tom a' Chòinich having snow on its peak on 30^th August 2003, which I believe was a fresh snowfall, not semi-permanent snow left over from the previous year; but the article seems to have been taken down.]

Chris EilbeckGeograph

Also, there is in the Lochalsh area another coastal village with an unusually warm microclimate, and with the ridiculously English-sounding name of Plockton. Plockton is famous for having cabbage trees (Cordyline australis), a palm-like native of New Zealand, growing in the main street.

The area immediately inland of Lochalsh is very remote, and an excellent place to hide something you don't want Muggles to find. In fact, it's so remote it doesn't seem to have a name of its own, and even Geograph has no photographs for much of it: it's just a bit of bare, mountainous countryside west of Strathglass, east of Lochalsh and north of Kintail. Hogwarts could well be in or near Glencarron,

Hugh VenablesGeograph

a little-visited valley of great beauty: indeed you could imagine that the glen is little-visited because the spells which conceal Hogwarts put Muggle visitors off!

For example, just to the south of Glencarron is a parallel and even more remote valley called Glenuaig, which seems to have just one house in it: you could posit that Hogwarts and Hogsmeade lie somewhere at the end of Glenuaig, or in another such (imaginary) valley in the same area. If it indeed has an especially balmy microclimate,

fboosmanCreative Commons Licence

the area round Hogsmeade could be as green and lush as Balquhidder, which lies in a more southerly and inland area of the Highlands, rather than the bracken-gold of Glencarron itself.

Glencarron also has a railway line running through it, of which the line to Hogsmeade could be a spur,

thYour pictures of Scotland: 21 - 28 November

although if so the snow-covered mountain which the train passed couldn't be Tom a' Chòinich, which is thirteen miles from the railway line. But there is another peak almost as tall, called Maoile Lunndaidh, close to the line, and which conceivably might have a little snow on it in September. Glen Affric, on the other hand, has the advantage that it contains a remnant of the Ancient Caledonian Forest, as well as its proximity to Tom a' Chòinich.

View from the north ridge of Carn nan Gobhar towards Glun Odhar, about where Google Maps places Hogsmeade © Eric Gunstensen at Geograph

I suspect Google has chosen this spot as a generic indication that Hogsmeade is "somewhere in the West Highlands", Glun Odhar being roughly dead centre of the West Highlands. Nevertheless it's a perfectly feasible spot if you assume the train takes a slow and/or winding route from Inverness, to explain the time spent passing through wild land, and it's suitably remote: apart from Inverchoran the only man-made feature within three miles seems to be a power station two miles away, and there are plenty of mountains into which Hogsmeade could be tucked. I don't know if any of those mountains have ever been known to carry snow in September.

Against Hogwarts being in the West Highlands:

If Hogwarts were in the West Highlands, and so close to water, the residents would be eaten alive by swarms of midges during the late summer and autumn - indeed it would probably be difficult to fly during September and October, owing to the reduction in visibility occasioned by the dense clouds of insects. Of course, they could use charms to keep the midges away - but they are such a dominant feature of West Highland life that you would expect them at least to be mentioned.

That English name, again: "Hogsmeade" really is an exceptionally un-Scottish-sounding place-name, much more so even than Plockton is. Plockton at least sounds like something you might find in the north of England, and is an Anglicization of the Gaelic name Am Ploc, whereas Hogsmeade sounds like it belongs in the south of England.

The Forbidden Forest, as described, is quite the wrong sort of forest for the Highlands.

We are left with a toss-up between the West Highlands and the Galloway Hills. The names, including the probable Arthurian reference, the mix of trees in the Forest, the lack of midges and the passing-off of Hogwarts as a ruin all tend to suggest Galloway, whilst the journey-time, the remoteness and the presence in the school of a map of Argyll all suggest the West Highlands. Other factors - the presence of a snow-capped mountain in the vicinity on 1^st September, the early spring and the comparatively mild climate - could fit either area.

My own preference in my stories was initially for Galloway, but that was on the assumption that none of the possible locations explained the length of the journey. Having worked out a way to make a West Highland location fit with the journey-time, by sending the train right round the coast, I'm now more inclined to favour the Highlands. In any case I know most people will want to visualize Hogwarts as in the Highlands, and I suspect that JK herself does. For the purposes of this essay, therefore, I have used a point at latitude 5° West and longitude 57° 30′ North (that is, in the wild, empty country just north of Kintail) as my standard reference point for purposes of calculating sunset times etc. at Hogwarts.

If we set Hogwarts in the Kintail area, we can assume that the anomalous mix of trees in the Forest is the result of Hogwarts' special microclimate - or even that the Forest is full of birch, ash and alder trees as a Highland wood should be, but Harry never thought about them by name. But we are still left with the problem of the name.

There are in Scotland three place-names beginning with "Meadow", all in the south quite close to England (Meadowbank in Midlothian, Meadowfoot in Ayrshire and Meadowmill in East Lothian). There are no places called anything-mead.

However, there are in the Western Isles two places called An Leth Meadhanach and Ceathramh Meadhanach. The "Meadhanach" part actually means "middle". You can imagine that if Hogsmeade started out as "Something-Meadhanach", Hengist and other English settlers might have misunderstood it and corrupted it to "Meade".

"Hog" cannot be a Gaelic word as such because there is no free-standing 'h' in Gaelic, only the guttural 'ch' and "gh" and various other, odder aspirates; but again it could be a corruption of a Gaelic word - perhaps of "oighreachd", which means an estate or inheritance of land. That would make Hogwarts "the estate of Arthur" and Hogsmeade "the middle bit of the estate". Or "middle land" - "middle earth", even.

Or "Hogsmeade" could be a bastard name in two languages, which would not be unprecedented - there is in the Scottish Borders a waterfall called the Dowie Linn, Linn being an Anglo-Saxon word for "waterfall" and Dowie a corruption of "dubh", the Gaelic word for "black". Then we can have "the howe of Arthur" and "the middle howe", or "the hog of Arthur" and "the middle of the area associated with the hog of Arthur". Since a howe or hough is a stand-alone domed hill, usually a burial mound, it would make perfect sense for the hill the Shrieking Shack stands on to be "the middle howe" and the bigger hill the castle is on (or some other hill within the school grounds) "Arthur's howe".

At any rate, if we assume the "meade" element of "Hogsmeade" is an Anglicization of "meadhanach", we can get away with siting Hogsmeade in the West Highlands; but note that this implies that there is or was a third "Hog-something", with Hogsmeade "in the middle" between it and Hogwarts. It can't be the big mountain in the north-west where Sirius's cave was, because the sequence goes Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, mountain: it must be some other feature which is on the far side of Hogsmeade, relative to Hogwarts. It could be a howe, a mountain, another village (presumably a Muggle one) or a large house or farm.

The use of the word "lake" instead of the Scots "loch" can also just about be explained away as linguistic corruption, since there is in central Scotland a body of water called the Lake of Menteith, which is believed to be a corruption of the Scots word "laich", a low-lying place (in England one would say "Menteith Bottom"). Other than that, though, there are only supposed to be about five bodies of water in Scotland which are referred to as lakes, all of them either man-made or in Galloway or both.

Conclusions and criteria which must be met by any map:

Hogwarts is somewhere in Scotland. To reach it, the Hogwarts Express leaves London at 11am and travels broadly north for a little over nine hours. Its speed during the first hour of travel is about 65-70mph, if the Daily Prophet observes British Summertime: if it maintains this average speed throughout, then its total journey is around six hundred miles. If the Prophet sticks to Greenwich Meantime then the speed and distance are half that.

Leaving London, the train passes rapidly into an area of green fields and open country. It passes by the edge of Norfolk an hour after setting out (two hours, if the Prophet runs on GMT), and an hour after that it is travelling through countryside which is noticeably "darker and wilder". It goes through moorland and by little villages, and passes by a great city no later than 3pm. Somewhere between 1pm and 4pm it passes through an area of rolling hills. Its route eventually takes it past Peebles, so it almost certainly travels up the east side of England to get there.

The southern part of these requirements can be satisifed by assuming that the train heads north from London, swings east past the edge of Norfolk and crosses through Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and South and West Yorkshire, passing by Leeds at about 2:50pm, before travelling up the east side of the Pennines and round by Berwick on Tweed, and then up the Tweed valley to Peebles. From Peebles, it should still have about two hundred and fifty miles to go, if it indeed maintains an average speed of around 65mph.

Hogwarts itself is in one of the mountainous areas of Scotland, is itself surrounded by mountains, and is so placed that the train enters truly wild country not more than thirty-two miles out from Hogwarts. Not long before reaching Hogwarts one passes by a mountain which on at least one occasion has snow on the top on 1^st September.

Hogwarts has an unusually mild climate, a very early spring and a rather late sunrise, which strongly suggests that it is in the west, and probably quite near the coast. The mix of trees in the Forbidden Forest suggests the Lowlands, but this may be a result of the mild microclimate, and possibly of magical climate-control.

The village of Hogsmeade has what at least appears to be a strikingly English name, and Hogwarts itself sounds like an Arthurian reference.

No location matches all of these points perfectly, but the three best options are probably the Galloway Hills, southern Argyll and the Kintail area, all of them moutainous, all of them in the west, and all having either a mild climate, or at least isolated pockets of mild climate.

Galloway fits the mild climate, the English-sounding names, the Arthurian connection, the passing into wild country less than half an hour before arriving, the tree-mix and the ability to pass off Hogwarts as a ruined castle best of all but if the average speed of the train is 65-70mph it fits the journey-time and distance least well, being only about seventy-five miles from Peebles. If the speed of the train is 35mph then Galloway fits this best.

Argyll fits the Arthurian connection and the mild climate reasonably well, and has the advantage of some canon support (the map of Argyll displayed at Hogwarts). But it fits the approach-via a snow-capped mountain least well, and depending on what angle you approach it from it's either too close to Peebles, or too far into wild land.

Kintail fits the tree-mix least well, but it fits the journey-time and the passing by a snow-capped mountain best of all, assuming the speed of the train to be 65-70mph (if the speed of the train is 35mph then Kintail is the least likely option). It's possible to shoe-horn the other details into it with a bit of special pleading. If Hogwarts is indeed in this area, it is probably close to either Glen Carron (best fit for the railway-line) or Glen Affric (best fit for the snow-covered mountain).

Map of possible location of Hogwarts:

The accompanying map shows the likely route of the Hogwarts Express through England and Scotland, most probably ending up somewhere near or just north of Kintail.

If you are especially attached to the idea of the train crossing the Glenfinnan Viaduct, you could have the train turn south-west before reaching Inverness, travel down Strathspey (on a line that isn't there in real life, alongside the A95, A9 and A86), turn west at Fort William and cross the Viaduct to end in Kintail by an alternative route. This would require Strathspey itself not to be counted as wild country, which is moot: it's properly in the Highlands but it's a wooded valley with an A-road in it so it might count as "not wild".

It would also require the train to run cross-wise across some mountain ridges instead of along them, and to travel very close to the sea near Glenfinnan

On the whole the idea of the Hogwarts train going across Glenfinnan Viaduct creates more problems than it's worth, plus you would expect that if the train did cross it it would be remarked on in the books - but it's just about possible to shoehorn it in.

Steam train on the Inverness-Kyle of Lochalsh line, by Ingrid Deschryver of Lochcarron, from BBC website - Your Pictures of Scotland: 9-16 May 2014: Lochcarron is close to Lochalsh so this was probably taken at that end of the line. Just imagine the train to be scarlet.