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Transportation between Mainland Scotland, Shetland and Orkney

I "met" a very lovely gentleman on this forum a couple of years ago who shared his itinerary of the Shetlands and Orkneys with me. Because of commitments on both ends of our trip, we cannot spend as many days as he did on Shetland and Orkney.

We will leave Aberdeen on the overnight ferry on a Monday, arriving Tuesday morning. We plan to spend Tuesday - Saturday touring Shetland. We would have preferred to take the ferry to Orkney, but it appears to only run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So, we plan to fly on Sunday from Sumburgh to Kirkwall.

We plan to fly from Kirkwall to Inverness. We need to be in Inverness on Friday morning. We have been fortunate enough to visit Inverness a couple of times in the past and would prefer to spend as much time as possible on Orkney. I only see one flight a day (on Loganair). We would like to fly out on Thursday, but are we running big risk it will get cancelled? If we took the ferry to Scabster, I couldn't figure out how to get to Inverness.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by
6299 posts

If we took the ferry to Scrabster, I couldn't figure out how to get to
Inverness.

Two options.

  • Coach. Route X99 between the port and Inverness operated by Stagecoach. Find schedule and other information at https://www.stagecoachbus.com/
  • A taxi from the port to Thurso and then train to Inverness. There are a couple of taxi companies in Thurso, pick one and prebook a taxi. For information about the train, see https://www.scotrail.co.uk