SCOTLAND · WHISKY, LOCHS & THE OLD TOWN
A dram, a loch, and the long road north.
Distillery tours and Highland day trips, Old Town ghost walks and the Jacobite steam train. Edinburgh and Glasgow, Loch Ness and Skye, and a good pub at the end of every one.
Only in Scotland
Three you can only do up here.
Castles and coach tours turn up in every country. A cask-strength pour in its home glen, a steam train over Glenfinnan, and the deepest loch in Britain do not.
Straight from the cask
A dram at the source
You can pour a Scotch anywhere on earth. You can only nose it warm off the still in the glen it was born in. Distillery tours take you past the copper, into the warehouse, and round to the tasting bench where the cask-strength stuff lives.
- 1 Edinburgh: The Scotch Whisky Experience Tour and Tasting
- 2 Edinburgh: Underground Vaults Evening Ghost Tour with Whisky
- 3 Edinburgh: The Johnnie Walker Whisky Experience
Steam over the viaduct
The Jacobite, the long way west
A working steam train hauls out of Fort William and curves across the 21 arches of the Glenfinnan Viaduct on its way to the sea at Mallaig. Hogwarts borrowed the shot; the real thing still runs it every morning in season, whistle and all.
- 1 From Edinburgh: Glenfinnan, Glencoe, and Highlands Day Trip
- 2 Edinburgh: Glenfinnan Viaduct, Glencoe & Fort William
- 3 Edinburgh: Glenfinnan Viaduct, Glencoe & Fort William
Into the Great Glen
Loch Ness and the deep north
Twenty-three miles long and deeper than the North Sea, Loch Ness holds more fresh water than every lake in England and Wales combined, and one very famous rumour. Day trips run the Great Glen past Urquhart Castle and out into the wide Highland nowhere.
- 1 Inverness: Isle of Skye and Eilean Donan Castle Day Trip
- 2 From Inverness: Loch Ness Cruise and Urquhart Castle
- 3 From Inverness: Isle of Skye and Eilean Donan Castle Tour
Where most trips begin
Start with the big day north.
If you only leave the city once, leave it for this. More travellers build a Scotland trip around the run to Loch Ness and the Highlands than anything else here.
The classics
Scotland’s Most Popular Tours
Loch Ness, Edinburgh Castle, the underground vaults and the Scotch Whisky Experience. The days most people come north for.
Where to begin
The Scotland a trip gets built around.
The distilleries, the loch, the misty isle, the Old Town dark and the film trails. The handful of things most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
Know your drams
Five regions, five kinds of whisky.
Where a single malt is made changes how it tastes. Learn the five before you book a tasting, then go and prove it on the bench.
The water of life
Scotland in a single glass.
Uisge beatha, the Gaelic gave it: the water of life. More than a hundred and thirty working distilleries turn barley, water and Highland air into the one drink the whole country is known for. A tour walks you from the mash tun to the warehouse to the part that matters, the dram poured straight off the cask.
Read the guide: the best whisky tours in Scotland →The big day trip
How to do Loch Ness and the Highlands.
It is a long way north and back, so the how matters as much as the if. Three ways to reach the Great Glen from Edinburgh, depending on the time you have and the crowd you can stand.
The misty isle
Skye, over the sea.
The Cuillin ridge, the folded green of the Quiraing and the waterfall at the Old Man of Storr. The largest of the Inner Hebrides is a long day from Edinburgh and worth every mile of it, the kind of landscape that looks invented. Cross the bridge or take the road over the moor.
Isle of Skye tours →Outlander
Walk straight into the story.
The standing stones, the clan battlefields and the great houses that stood in for Lallybroch and Castle Leoch are real places you can walk through. Guided trips run the trail across the Highlands and into Lowland palaces, with the history that the show was hung on.
- 1 From Edinburgh: The Outlander Experience Guided Tour
- 2 Outlander Film Locations Day Trip from Edinburgh
- 3 From Edinburgh: “Outlander” Filming Locations Explorer Tour
After dark
Edinburgh, once the lights go down.
The Old Town was built to hide things, and it still does. Down in the South Bridge vaults, along the closes off the Royal Mile and round the haunted graveyards, the after-dark tours trade on four hundred years of plague, bodysnatchers and bad behaviour, with a pub crawl never more than a wynd away.
See the ghost & vault tours →By place
Scotland, six ways.
Edinburgh for the castle and the closes. The Highlands for the deep lochs. Skye for the sea cliffs. Glasgow for the music and the bars. Loch Lomond for the bonnie banks. St Andrews for the golf and the East Neuk.
By type
Pick how to spend the day.
A tasting if you want the drink. A ghost walk if you want the dark. A steam train if you want the view. Whisky, walking, film trails, loch cruises and a proper pub crawl.
Plan it
Three days, done right.
Never been? Here is a long weekend that hits the city, the Highlands and a proper dram without a wasted hour.
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