Edinburgh takes two days. The Highlands take the rest.
Which Loch Ness day trip actually stops in Glencoe. What an hour in the vaults under the Royal Mile costs. Whether Skye repays the drive from Inverness. Reviews of every tour you can book in Scotland.
The castle, the vaults, the long road to Loch Ness, a dram at the end of it.
Four bookings a first Scottish trip is built around. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The long day northLoch Ness, Scottish Highlands, Glencoe and Pitlochry TourLoch Ness, Glencoe and Pitlochry in one run out of Edinburgh. It is twelve hours door to door, so take the early departure and eat on the coach.
02Under the Royal MileThe World Famous Underground Ghost TourThe sealed vaults below South Bridge, by candlelight and in small groups. Evening slots go first, and the capped numbers are the point.
03The castle, properlyEdinburgh Castle: Guided Walking Tour with Entry TicketEntry plus a guide who knows which half of the rock earns your ninety minutes. Book a morning slot before the coach groups reach the esplanade.
04The first dramThe Scotch Whisky Experience Guided Whisky Tour – An Introduction to WhiskyAn hour on the Royal Mile that sorts Speyside from Islay from Lowland, so the distillery day later in the week is a choice rather than a guess.
Every good Scottish day begins by leaving town.
The Highlands are a day trip from all three cities, and the coach does the driving on the single-track sections you would rather not. Three kinds of run north, what it costs to get on one, and how far each one goes.
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, and the towns the day trips leave from.
A castle on a volcanic plug, a shipbuilding city that turned into a music one, a Highland capital at the head of the loch, and three smaller bases with reasons of their own. Six starting points, and the best day out from each.
Edinburgh: the rock before ten, the vaults after eight.
Everything in Edinburgh →Two days covers the castle, the Royal Mile and one thing underneath it. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city, and they answer three different questions.
Guide and entry, or entry alone
The castle sells a plain timed ticket and a guided version. Alone you get the Honours of Scotland and the view; with a guide you get why a garrison sat on a volcanic plug for eleven centuries. Ninety minutes either way.
The chambers under South Bridge
Nineteen vaults were built into the bridge arches, let to traders, flooded, abandoned and bricked up. The tours go down by candle in capped groups, which is why the eight o’clock departures fill before the afternoon ones.
The Mile and the closes running off it
A mile of street from the castle down to Holyrood, with seventy narrow closes dropping off either side, most still named for whoever traded there in 1650. The cheapest good hour in the city.
The Old Town has a second city underneath it.
South Bridge was thrown across the Cowgate in 1788 and the arches beneath it were let out as workshops until the damp won. Greyfriars is a short walk uphill. Both run after sunset, both cap their groups, and neither is a theatre show.
Scotland kept more castles than it has towns to put them in.
Edinburgh and Stirling hold the two great rocks, Urquhart holds the loch, and Kilchurn sits out in Loch Awe with nothing around it at all. Most are a day trip from a city, the ticket usually comes with a guide, and the good ones explain the argument that ended at Culloden.
- 1Edinburgh Castle: Guided Walking Tour with Entry Ticketfrom $51
- 2Edinburgh Castle Guided Walking Tour in Englishfrom $52
- 3Royal Mile and Edinburgh Castle – Small Group Walking Tourfrom $70
Scotland’s most booked days out.
Every Scottish tour review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
The World Famous Underground Ghost Tour
Walk Edinburgh’s Old Town after dark, visit Greyfriars Kirkyard, and descend into South Bridge vaults on a 75-minute tour. Guides such as David, Maggie Dickinson, Fred Knox, and the Fairy Wife use history, humor, and ghost stories to bring the city’s darker past to life. The 6:45pm departure is the best fit for families.
From · $26
Read our review →
2
Underground Vaults Walking Tour in Edinburgh Old Town
from $33
3
Loch Ness, Scottish Highlands, Glencoe and Pitlochry Tour
from $67
4
Loch Ness & Highlands Small-Group Tour from Edinburgh with Cruise
from $84
5
Edinburgh Castle: Guided Walking Tour with Entry Ticket
from $51
6
Edinburgh Castle Guided Walking Tour in English
from $52
7
The Chocolatarium Chocolate Tour Experience in Edinburgh
from $44
8
Original Harry Potter Locations Tour in Edinburgh : Guided Tour
from $19
Whisky is the one thing you have to come here for.
Speyside, Islay, the Lowlands and the Highlands taste nothing alike, and an hour on the Royal Mile sorts that out before you spend a whole day driving to a still house. Tastings run from a single dram at a bar to a warehouse walk that ends at cask strength.
Every whisky tour →
What a day out in Scotland actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay. A fair share of the best Scottish days come in under the price of dinner.
Old Town walks, the vaults, city sightseeing buses and the shorter whisky tastings.
The full-day standards: Loch Ness and Glencoe by coach, castle entry with a guide, St Andrews and Fife.
Private drivers, small-group Skye runs and the multi-day Highland trips that stay overnight.
Three things that only happen in Scotland.
Castles and coastline turn up all over Europe. A monster hunt on a freshwater loch, a railway viaduct a film made famous, and a chapel carved with plants nobody in 1450 should have seen do not.
Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle
The loch holds more fresh water than every lake in England and Wales together, and the peat in it kills the light about a metre down, which is most of the reason the story has lasted since 1933. Urquhart Castle stands on a headland halfway along, blown up by its own garrison in 1692 so nobody else could hold it. Coaches run down the A82 from Inverness in half an hour; the cruise boats leave from Dochgarroch and Urquhart Bay.
- 1Loch Ness, Scottish Highlands, Glencoe and Pitlochry Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,854 reviews
- 2Loch Ness & Highlands Small-Group Tour from Edinburgh with Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 6,022 reviews
- 3Loch Ness, Glencoe & The Highlands★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,771 reviews
Glenfinnan and the Outlander country
The Glenfinnan Viaduct carries twenty-one arches over the head of Loch Shiel, and a steam service still crosses it twice a day in season, which is why the lay-by fills an hour beforehand. The Outlander locations are scattered wider: Doune Castle standing in for Castle Leoch, Midhope for Lallybroch, Culross for the village. Most day trips out of Edinburgh reach three or four of them.
- 1Original Harry Potter Locations Tour in Edinburgh : Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,236 reviews
- 2Outlander Film Locations Day Trip from Edinburgh★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,776 reviews
- 33-Day Isle of Skye Inverness Highlands and Glenfinnan Viaduct Tour from Edinburgh★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,351 reviews
Rosslyn Chapel
Seven miles south of Edinburgh, and every surface inside it is carved: a hundred and ten green men, a pillar with a spiral masons still argue about, and maize on a lintel cut decades before anyone here had seen the Americas. Forty years of work, stopped unfinished when the founder died. Small site, capped numbers, usually paired with a run down into the Borders.
- 1Rosslyn Chapel and Scottish Borders Small-Group Day Tour from Edinburgh★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 673 reviews
- 2Rosslyn Chapel and Hadrian’s Wall Small Group Tour from Edinburgh★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 673 reviews
- 3Rosslyn Chapel, Dunfermline Abbey and Stirling Castle Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 649 reviews
Four Scottish bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed entry, a steam timetable, a hard cap on group size and a drive long enough that the minibuses sell out weeks ahead.
- 01Edinburgh Castle: Guided Walking Tour with Entry TicketEntry runs on timed slots with a cap on each one, and in summer the castle sells the day out. The early slots, the quiet ones, go first.
- 02Glenfinnan Viaduct, Glencoe & Fort WilliamThe steam service over the viaduct keeps a fixed seasonal timetable and the whole day is built around one crossing. Miss the departure and there is nothing to move it to.
- 033-Day Isle of Skye Inverness Highlands and Glenfinnan Viaduct Tour from EdinburghSkye is five hours from Edinburgh and the small-group minibuses are the only way to see it without driving the single-track yourself. They fill weeks out from May.
- 04Underground Vaults Walking Tour in Edinburgh Old TownThe vaults are taken by candlelight in capped groups, so every departure has a hard ceiling on numbers. The evening slots are the ones people want.
Scotland has weather rather than a season. Book around it.
Rain here usually arrives horizontally and leaves twenty minutes later, but a Highland day can lose its view for good and there is no refund for cloud. Put the long outdoor run early in the trip so you have a spare day to move it to, and keep a roof in reserve for the afternoon it turns.
By place — cities, lochs and islands
By kind of day — glen, castle, cellar or close
Edinburgh, Stirling, Glencoe, Loch Ness, Skye: the route almost everyone takes first.
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