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Scotland in March with two children. Help?!?

Posted by on

Hi all!

Due to having to juggle around work and school schedules, we are flying into Inverness in late March for 8 days (from USA). We have two children: 5 and 10 year old boys. They are so excited about going and are convinced that they are going to see Transformers (insert rolling eyes).

We want this to be fun for them, but we know that it is going to be cold and that they may not have the attention span to tour all of the castles and other areas like my husband and I would really like to do. We need to be realistic.

Has anyone ever done a trip like this with kids? What would be our best course of action? We know that we want to do the Highlands, Culloden, Edinburgh, and possibly Glasgow.

How can we make this work for our family and still be enjoyable?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Posted by
125 posts

I used the blog below to help plan a fairly recent international trip for my family. It looks like it has good ideas for family travel in Scotland too. (Note: I do not know the blog's authors and am not in any way affiliated with this blog.) When planning our family's trips, my favorite resources include Rick Steves guides (they are excellent and give very specific, helpful tips), Tripadvisor forums and lists/reviews of top attractions in the areas we are considering, and blogs.

https://www.earthtrekkers.com/10-day-scotland-itinerary/
https://www.earthtrekkers.com/destination-scotland/

Posted by
3123 posts

With only 8 days I would recommend limiting overnight destinations to Inverness (= highlands, Culloden, Loch Ness), and Edinburgh.

Being March, yes it will be cold. Do you live where the weather gets cold? If not, start getting the kids oriented to bundling up in warm clothes & waterproof gear.

One tip is to plan a mix of outdoor and indoor activities. Outdoors to let off steam, indoors to prevent crankiness from cold & wet exposure. At Culloden there's a large visitor centre with interesting exhibits and a nice cafeteria. Near Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness (a ruin, thus outdoors) is the Loch Ness Centre & Exhibition, a fairly scientific and fact-based indoor experience about Nessie sightings. In Edinburgh consider the tour of Mary King's Close, among many other places along the Royal Mile where you can duck indoors. The National Museum is spacious and has a wide variety of exhibits for all ages.

Posted by
3560 posts

Good luck! We are starting to find that the kids have different interests and hard to find things that everyone wants to do. Ours are 14 and 11. So we implemented a new stragtegy..............no choices! You must do what mom and dad want!

Posted by
28 posts

We took our son to Scotland when he had just turned eleven. Highlights for him included: Culloden (he loved trying out the guns), Aviemore (hiking, osprey center, reindeer) - but the weather might not be suitable in March. For Edinburgh the Surgeon's Hall and the underground tour were big hits. In Glasgow he enjoyed the transport museum. Have fun!

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