Visiting Scotland - route ideas

How long are you planning to be in Scotland? When in the "spring"?

We're thinking of May and 8 - 9 days in Scotland.

Immediate thought is that 8-9 days is not enough to see all those places and have any time to do any real sightseeing or hiking. Distances might look short on a map, but driving takes much longer than google might suggest. If your 8-9 days includes arrival and departure days then it looks even worse.

I think you might need to narrow your focus a little. For example when you say you want to hike, how long do you want to spend hiking? Do you want to hike in hills, mountains, on a beach? Have you looked at Walk Highlands website to get an idea of hikes in the areas you've mentioned?

I assume you are renting a car? You'd want to do that when leaving Edinburgh as a car is a hindrance in the city.

Are you flying into Edinburgh and out of Glasgow? Do you want to visit both cities?

Why Dundee? Is it on the same day as Pitlochry? What do you want to see in Dundee? The Discovery and V&A museums would take a full day of most people's time.

Again what interests you about Inverness? There's not much for tourists in town. Are you wanting to see Loch Ness or Culloden battlefield?

We probably need more flesh on the bones of this trip to enable us to advise more comprehensively, but at the moment it looks very rushed.

These are such helpful questions. Thanks for all the info - I'll take a deeper look at what might be best to focus on.

8-9 days isn't anywhere long enough to try and achieve everything you want to do/see. scotland may not seem very large but it will take a lot longer to cover distances than you might expect. You need to SLOW DOWN and actually enjoy the places you are visiting, otherwise it becomes a tick list and all becomes a bit of a blur.

Also what do you mean by 'hiking'? That can easily talk half a day if not lionger...

Are you likely to be jet lagged? If so you probably won't want to do much on the first day.

Are you planning on hiring a car or using public transport? You won't want a car in either Edinburgh or Glasgow as public transport is excellent and parking horendous.

Being realisticc I think you need to cut at least two places out of your itinerary unless you are planning a road trip and viewing through the car windscreen.

Edinburgh and Glasgow do merit a couple of days each. St Andrews could be done as a day trip from Edinburgh (train to Leuchars and then bus) . What are your expectations of Dundee? This doesn't immediately fit into your objectives and could be cut.

Choose between Pitlochry OR Cairngorms/Invernes. Work out what you want toi see/do and then decide how long you need to allow for each.

Oban - as well as Kerrera, you could also take the ferry to Mull and onto Iona. Again allow a couple of days there.

One approach to take to get your ideas organized (what I do, but there are many other ways) is to divide each day into three blocks - AM - PM - EVE, and count nights (Hotels) rather than days. In 9 days you will have 27 blocks of time - actually 25 because morning day 1 is arrival and evening day 9 is near the airport from which you depart. Every time you change location uses up one block of time too, which is why most people will suggest focusing on only three or four places in nine days. So out of a list of half a dozen possible places, and many many possible activities what are your top interests.?

I'd disagree with Nickb's block theory. I don't see why changing locations consumes a block. In fact, it might save a block, if it saves a lot backtracking. Unless you're the type that moves all their clothing into closets and cabinets rather than living out of an open suitcase, changing locations adds the time of settling your bill. We've been to Scotland for 9 weeks over three trips and never stayed anywhere more than three nights, and that's only twice. Most stays are one night. We do tend to find the things we're interested in are "between" towns, rather than "in" towns.

Our fourth trip this May is another 3 weeks, and includes three 3 night stays, which is probably due to getting old.

I think you have gotten some good advice. I also don’t think 8 to 9 days is enough for what you want to do. A few years ago I drove a similar route to what you are thinking of, but I had the car for ten days, and I bookended my trip with 6 days in Edinburgh up front, and four days in Glasgow at the end. I think if you want to spend any time in those two cities you will need to add several days to your plan. Also keep in mind that if you want to get a ferry to an island that it will possibly require you to spend a couple of nights in one place to accomplish that. For instance, I spent two nights in
Oban in order to do a one day trip to Mull and Iona. As you drive you will find many places where you will want to stop and get out of the car to wander a bit. This means it will take a lot longer than you think to get from point A to B. But, this is the way to do if you want to see some wonderful, off the beaten track places. Just keep this in mind when planning your driving route. It may be best to shorten your route by about 25% in order to accommodate the short stops to get out of the car.

You might want to take a look at Rick's Scotland tours for an idea about how much ground to cover in your time frame. I'm on the 13 day Scotland tour and it looks a lot like the route you plan to take (only it starts in Glasgow and ends in Edinburgh).

This will be my first time in Scotland, but as the others have mentioned it sounds like a pretty ambitious itinerary for just 8-9 days. The Heart of Scotland tour is 8 days and may give you a better idea of what you could manage.

I hope you enjoy your trip. i'm very excited for my first adventure in Scotland.
Happy Travels!