Itinerary Feedback for First Visit to Scotland (and London)

National Museum of Scotland is worth visiting, and they have a great gift shop. Also- my memory is getting hazy, but I believe there's a nice rooftop restaurant.
Have a great trip!

These are some great places you are visiting, here are a few thoughts from me:

-Just be aware Murrayfield isn't very close to the main Edinburgh sites, so you'll need to familiarise yourself with the bus/tram to get into town each day.
-If you want to do whisky tasting I highly recommend The Scotch Malt Whisky Society: https://smws.eu/venues/28-queen-street-edinburgh
-For shopping, you may be thinking of Grassmarket rather than Haymarket? Cockburn Street is also very good (FYI it is pronounced Co-burn).
-Oban has a very good distillery as well if you want to do a tour/tasting.
-If you need dinner ideas in Hammersmith, some of my favourites are Potli (Indian), Eat Tokyo (Japanese- also have a few locations around London), and Mahdi (Iranian). There's also the Polish Social and Cultural Association which serves food.
-I would allow a whole day to visit Windsor.

I hope that helps a bit, good luck with your planning.

Overall, I think your itinerary looks great! You're seeing some interesting things, and you're allowing time to see it, and you're not trying to rush too much.

That said, I agree with Pat about visiting the National Museum of Scotland. It is well worth a visit. You can find Dolly the cloned sheep there and so many really interesting things on display. It's really a fascinating museum, and it's free!

If you have time, a fun thing to do in the evening after dusk, is to go to Greyfriars, which is a very old and spooky cemetery. This was one of my favorite places and not just because of Harry Potter. It has a very macabre vibe to it, so going in the dusk of the evening is best. I first saw the memorial and grave of Greyfriars Bobby, the loyal little dog who guarded his master’s grave for so long. Then I tracked down the gravestone of Thomas Riddell, whose name was the inspiration for J.K. Rowling’s notorious villain. If you’re looking for it, just put the name in Google maps and it will show you the way. It was also fun looking through the black gates to see the school that inspired Hogwarts. Even if you're not a Harry Potter fan, it's still a really cool place to see.

When you leave Greyfriars, turn to your left, and there's a really good gelato place just up the road, and also a pub called Sandys Bell, which offers live music in the back (lots of fun Gaelic and folks music). I went here one night and got to enjoy the music, along with a beer and a Scotch egg. 😊 Very friendly people there!

Also, while you are visiting Culloden Battlefield, make sure you stop off at Clava Cairns, which is a short half mile away from Culloden. This is a fascinating prehistoric site and dates back over 4,000 years. The standing stones there are really incredible. Parking is easy there, and it's a short walk to the stones. https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/clava-cairns/

I would definitely move Borough Market to a non-weekend day if possible. It will be packed on the weekend. Even during the week it gets crowded. I went there around 10:00, and it wasn't too bad then, but by noon it was really packed, and that was on a Thursday or Friday, I think.

One other thing: I don't know if this is important to you, but if you wanted to see the changing of the guard at Windsor Castle, you should know that it's only three days a week that it happens, and that's on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday starting at 11:00. Right now it looks like you are scheduled to visit on a Monday, so if you switch it till Saturday, you'd be able to see it.

Here's more info on it: https://www.householddivision.org.uk/guard-at-windsor-castle

Thanks everyone for the feedback and tips; some great suggestions in there, much appreciated indeed. We're getting very excited about our trip, can't wait! :-)

If the train from Edinburgh to London is on any weekend date after 19 September those are black out dates for ticket sales.
September and October weekends for many years have been favourite dates for line closures between Edinburgh and Newcastle with trains diverted via Carlisle and Hexham.
I don't know that's happening, but is very likely.

On weekdays LNER ticket sales on their own website/app only are currently open until 8 November.

I'll make an alternate suggestion for Day 10 - 11. If you are going back to Edinburgh only to get the train, have you instead considered the overnight train? We took the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Ft. William, and then a public bus down to Oban. You could return your car in Ft. William, and take the overnight train on either Day 10 or Day 11 to arrive in London by morning. That saves some time as you're traveling through the night, and we found the cost to be equivalent to 1 hotel night + LNER train for our family of 4.

Oban is a sweet town, I hope you enjoy! One of our favorite memories of the entire 11-day UK trip was our fishing charter out of Oban. It was a spectacular afternoon and we even encountered dolphins jumping by our boat! We also enjoyed our dinner at Cuan Mor and a yummy casual lunch at Gelatoburger.

Thanks uncpauper! Interesting suggestion on taking the overnight train; that would mean finding a car rental company that allows pickup and return at two different places; the one we've booked (Celtic Legends) apparently does not. So I'll have to explore that a bit more to see if it makes sense for us. Appreciate all the other suggestions, and glad to hear you enjoyed Oban! Speaking of which, we are reconsidering doing the 3- islands tour from there -- while many seem to enjoy it it does make for a very long day. Thinking of perhaps doing one or maybe two islands at the most or, alternatively, doing a day trip to Glencoe which we would otherwise miss seeing. Curious to hear any thoughts on that from the community? Thanks again to all for your helpful feedback!

Are you sure about Celtic Legend drop off procedures. When we rented from them we picked up our car in Glasgow and 3 weeks later dropped it off in Edinburgh. There was an extra fee but it was not significant. They were a great company to work with so try reaching out again.

Celtic Legend, which acts as a sort of broker or consolidator for Arnold Clark Rental Cars, does allow you to drop it off or pick it up at a different location, but you would have to email them to amend your contract. I had to change something when I rented through them, and it was a fairly easy process, but you do have to let them know. They will then send send you a new quote (with the additional drop-off fee) that you then agree to and send it back to them.

And there will be an extra fee, as was said above. I think mine was around £35 to £40, possibly? It does add to the cost, as would the cost for an overnight sleeper train. Just make sure that you're able to sleep in moving vehicles. I am not, so I've never had much luck with overnight trains. 😊

ETA: Actually, that's not going to work. I just realized that the other poster was telling you to return your car in Fort William. Unfortunately, Arnold Clark does not have a location in Fort William. The closest place they have there is in Inverness. It is possible for you to drop it off in Inverness and then get back down to Fort William, although that seems like a lot of trouble to me.

Regardless, I definitely would not change your rental to another company, though. I have been renting cars from Arnold Clark for the past four+ years, and I would never rent from anyone else in the UK, unless I had no other choice. They are by far and away the best car rental company I have ever dealt with. They're honest, they take the time to explain everything thoroughly when you pick your car up. They've driven me to the train station before when I was late after dropping the car off. They will upgrade your vehicle in many cases without charge. They're just really nice and very helpful and wonderful to deal with.

There would be no need to get back to Fort William, as there is also a sleeper train from Inverness. It doesn't take the dramatic route over Rannoch Moor as the Fort William train does but then it will be dark anyway.

Day 12 - don't bother with the hop on hop off (HOHO) buses if that's what you were planning. They are very slow because of the traffic, they can't go past certain sights like Buckingham Palace and if you hop off you often have difficulty hopping back on later because of congestion. It will be much better to take one of the standard buses on a route that passes many sights. these buses can use bus only lanes unlike the HOHO buses and only cost £1.75pp.