Edinburgh’s Hogmanay street party ensured that 2020 began with a bang in Scotland, although the coronavirus pandemic meant that it was not business as usual from March onwards.
Animals, celestial events and Prime Minister Boris Johnson feature in the best images PA news agency photographers have captured north of the border in the past 12 months.
Fireworks are launched from Edinburgh Castle at midnight during the Hogmanay New Year celebrations (Jane Barlow/PA)Members of the Jarl Squad in Lerwick on the Shetland Isles during the Up Helly Aa Viking festival in January (Andrew Milligan/PA)A cyclist makes his way up a quiet St Vincent Street in Glasgow as the UK entered lockdown in March to help curb the spread of the coronavirus (Andrew Milligan/PA)The Kelpies in Falkirk are lit up in blue in a weekly gesture of thanks to the hardworking NHS staff trying to battle coronavirus (Andrew Milligan/PA)A Humboldt penguin walks through spraying water at Blair Drummond Safari Park, Stirling, on World Penguin Day in April (Andrew Milligan/PA)The sun rises over Bass Rock lighthouse in the Firth of Forth near North Berwick, East Lothian (Jane Barlow/PA)People taking their daily exercise pass underneath the rainbow mural in Colinton Tunnel, Edinburgh, as the UK continued in lockdown in April (Jane Barlow/PA)Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh’s Portobello Beach overlooking the Firth of Forth on the 75th anniversary of VE Day in May (Jane Barlow/PA)A giraffe pokes its head out from its enclosure at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling in June (Andrew Milligan/PA)Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds crabs caught on the Carvela at Stromness Harbour during a visit to the Highlands and Northern Isles in July (Robert Perry/PA)Comet Neowise in the skies above the Forth Bridge, South Queensferry (Jane Barlow/PA)Investigators working at the scene of a derailment near Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, which cost the lives of three people in August (Jane Barlow/PA)The sky above Edinburgh Castle is lit up by My Light Shines On, an outdoor light installation for the 2020 Edinburgh International Festival in August (Jane Barlow/PA)Chris Doherty, owner of Hemingway’s in Edinburgh, decorated his empty restaurant with skeletons in October as it remain closed during a coronavirus lockdown (Jane Barlow/PA)Stirling Castle surrounded by trees displaying their autumn colours (Jane Barlow/PA)Students get a Covid-19 test at a mass testing centre set up at the sports centre at St Andrews University, ahead of the Christmas holiday (Jane Barlow/PA)Karis Milligan, nine, in the light tunnel at the launch of Edinburgh Zoo’s Christmas Nights (Andrew Milligan/PA)