You called Sire??
To be honest this is the kind of thread I just get a bad feeling from.
My concern is that you are letting technique dictate vision, which can be okay in some individual circumstances but I think it's wrong to set out to take just take long exposures and sunrise/set shots. For a lot of the landscapes long exposures won't be desirable so you'll be sacrificing the result from the out. Again you mention HDR, a very usfull process when you want to increase the dynamic range, however use of such process should be decided on location and not in advance.
If you don't know how to do something or have little experience then try before you go. It would be a waste to come back with nothing decent because you spent your time trying to take precontrived shots with little understanding on how to do them even if they were the right technique for the location.
Very astute points . letting creativity and indeed the scenne as you see it , not technique dictate shooting style and location.
However. Is it also not possible to have been inspired by images such as you had taken and try and move in that direction ;Not so much as duplicate but develop that " flair"
Also Scotland ( as a choice of location) certainly does seem to offer a lot of natural Beauty ( If you are ready to brave the elements!!)
In short.. do you take the pictures them decide PP techniqes later?
Do you decide which kind of PP at the time of taking the pictures , then shoot with that in mind
or do you simply let the scene you see before you decide how you go?
Technical expertise aside, it would be interesting to know how you endup with some of those shots in terma of what thought were going through your mind at the time