Pinpointing Hogwarts (don't worry - not about Snape this time!)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 102245

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...> 
wrote:

Shaun:
> And in the movie version of PoA, it is mentioned that Sirius Black 
> has been seen near (I think) Dufftown, and that is quite near 
> Hogwarts. This is more information than is given in the book 
> itself.
> 
> I'm not familiar with Scotland - but I looked up Dufftown, and it 
> looks kind of plausible for Hogwarts to be in that vicinity to me. 
> I'm just wondering if people who know the geography better can come 
> up with any reasons Hogwarts couldn't be in that area.
> 
> Any location I choose is going to be somewhat arbitrary, of course 
> - but I have to choose somewhere, so I'm looking for anything 
> potentially identifying.

Geoff:
IIRC, Shaun, you participated in a long thread several months ago 
about the location of Hogwarts when the consensus of opinion was that 
it had to be in the remoter part of the Highlands. There is perhaps a 
touch of movie contamination here because if you extrapolate the 
flight information of the Ford Anglia from Norfolk over Peebles and 
beyond you are heading into the West Highlands or further north, 
which is emphasised a bit by the use of the Glenfinnan Viaduct in the 
films.

That apart, Dufftown is well to the east of the Grampians and towards 
lower ground. Although we are told that Hogwarts is shielded from 
Muggle eyes, this is still close to larger areas of population being 
between Inverness and Aberdeen and with a number of reasonably large 
towns - Elgin, Grantown-on-Spey and the skiing area of Aviemore - not 
far distant and, in relative terms for Scotland, there is a 
reasonable network of roads whereas in our previous discussions 
towards the beginning of last November (which are in the 83900 
region) we looked at much remoter situations such as the Knoydart 
Peninsula or Rannoch Moor.

Having only seen POA once so far, I missed the comment about Dufftown 
but my gut feeling would be that the discussions we had way back 
seemed more accurate.