Loch Ness, Glencoe & The Highlands

On our third day in Scotland we booked for a one day bus tours from Edinburgh to Loch Ness and Glencoe; a full day taking in some of the most dramatic scenery of the Scottish Highlands.

In total it was 12hrs 30 mins and allowed us to see some amazing places.

Bus & Coffee

We got up early as the coach was departing from 08:00AM and was around 30min walk from our accommodation. Also as we like being punctual we aimed to arrive 10min before then. As a reward for waking up early we treated ourself to a Starbucks which had some excellent staff, though were not the best at spelling Jinny’s name, then head off for our adventure bus.

Location:

When we had booked the tour from timberland we had envisioned that we would be on a mini-bus, as that is what they show a lot on their homepage. But in our case, we were on the big big buses and it was BUSY! Thankfully as we had managed to arrive a bit early we got one the last two seats on the bus next to each. Thank god for being early! Otherwise we would have had 12hrs 30 mins on a bus sat separately.

With our new bus family, we seated off on our first stop to Kilmahog. What a lively name.

Kilmahog

The bus driver was excellent. Our first stop took around 90minutes to get there and along the way he was keeping us informed of facts, history and general trivial while he drove. As we had a lot of history about Edinburgh the day before in our tour, it was good to get a more broader scope about other clans and key people in the Scottish history.

You can also never get sick of being told how much Scottish people hate the English too.

We were heading for Trossachs Woollen Mill in Kilmahog. The location is the Gateway to the Highlands, and the Mill has some highland cattle. You can see them up close and buy them food to eat too. The Mill shop was also packed full of souvenirs and other Scottish related items. After around 20min at the Mill we set off to the next destination, the Highlands.

Location:

The Highlands

The Highlands are spectacular. The scenery is one of a kind, and you are constantly bombarded with beautiful mountains, streams, lochs and wildlife. The main reason we decided to book this particular tour was due to the fact it went through the Highlands and because the weather was perfect, we were definitely not disappointed.

One of the locations that we stopped off to take pictures was The Three Sisters in Glencoe. The “Three Sisters” also known as Bidean nam Bian Mountain have access to some great hiking routes and are spectacular to look at.

Location:

For lunch we stopped in a little village just outside of Fort William. There were a few places to have lunch at like the local hotel, restaurant and cafe. As it was a popular stopping destination for companies doing a similar tour, and we had our entire bus family to compete with too, those options would take a while to queue up and get served. So we decided to take the frugal and no doubt more delicious option of eating the sandwiches we had brought and have a beer! The weather was great, so we had a little picnic outside while waiting to head off to one of the tours main highlights, Loch Ness.

Location:

Loch Ness

I imagine that there are very few people int he UK who have not heard of Loch Ness. It such a famous location all thanks to, Nessie! The  Loch Ness Monster which apparently lives inside the Loch. So many legends, movies and books talk about Loch Ness. While we didn’t expect to see Nessie, it was exciting to finally visit a location which you have heard about your entire life but not been to.

The Loch is absolutely massive. It runs for 23 miles (37 km) along the natural geological cleft that stretches from Fort William in the west of the Scottish Highlands, to Inverness in the north. You can also see Urquhart Castle which sits right along side the Loch too.

We decided to go on the ‘Loch Ness by Jacobite’ cruise which is a great way to see the Loch and Castle. Plus it has a bar on board! How cool is that. We got to try out some local Loch Ness beer while taking int he views.

Location:

Inverness & Pitlochry

The most Northern point on the trip (and also the most North Jinny and I have ever been in our entire life) was Inverness. It’s the largest city and the cultural capital of the Scottish Highlands.  While we didn’t stop to look around, it was a very nice city. Especially the Inverness Castle, a red sandstone structure, stood out and worth seeing.

Location:

After Inverness it was the long drive back to our starting point in Edinburgh. There was one stop left, Pitlochry. This is a Victorian resort town which is famous (at least according to our bus driver) for Whisky ice cream. We didn’t have much time to stay over and as the ice cream line was little long we decided to have a different refreshment. BEER! We went to McKays Hotel, Bar & Restaurant that had some local drinks and great atmosphere.

Location:

Tour Summary

The tour was definitely full on! They crammed as much as possible within the 12hr 30min they could. The Highlands and Loch Ness were the highlights for us. The scenery made us fall in love with Scotland even more and it somewhere we would want to go back to again to spend more time there.

As we didn’t have access to a car, doing a tour was the best way for us to see the Scottish country side. It is expensive, but we would have missed out a lot of what makes Scotland Scotland. So 100% no regrets. If we did have access to a car we probably would have been able to enjoy more, spending more time in Highlands and not having to rush as much.

We had one more day in Scotland, so decide to head over to Glasgow for our final day of our Scotland Anniversary Trip!