5 days in Scotland

Have you considered enjoying a train trip to Edinburgh? The time is about the same but the scenery will be a lot nicer and you'll likely be less stressed.

Hi

I did look into train option but the ticket prices seem a lot more? I would prefer trains as well but from what I see the flights are half the price

Any links for train tickets?

Have you considered flying London-Inverness instead of Edinburgh? If your interests are all in the highlands areas and you only have 5 days, this might be worthwhile. As you say, tours out of Inverness cover the places you want to visit.

If you do fly in & out of Edinburgh, you'll have to allow a full day to get from there to the Inverness area, and ditto returning, whether by train or bus or rental car.

All of what you want to see will be difficult from Edinburgh as they are all several hours away. It would be best for to fly into Inverness and do your day trips from there. Although, you would be missing out on Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities. Taking the train from London will also be time-consuming so if you can add few days then you should. Fly to Edinburgh, spend a couple days, train to Inverness, spend a few days doing day trips from there, then fly out from Inverness? You might also check some of the tour companies. Rabbies has lots of options and may cover everything you want to see and have many that leave from Edinburgh.
https://www.rabbies.com/en/scotland-tours/from-edinburgh

Thanks will check out rabbies

Also considering to maybe just stay in Edinburgh for now since I don't want to leave that out and do whatever one day trips are possible then maybe later on visit again for other places that I've mentioned since I'll be living in uk only so it shouldn't

You should definitely fly straight to Inverness. Or you can spend the day taking the train all the way to Inverness. From York north the trip is quite nice, but it's long and if you want to focus on the sites listed above, you need to just get to Inverness.

The highlands is a very general area and so there is a lot of scope for different places. What types of things interest you? History? Castles? Hiking and the countryside?

Pam