Scotland and Ireland on the same trip?

You can get all the major Welsh castles, plus a couple of iron-age hill forts in four hard days. You can do a lot of damage to the highlands of Scotland in five more. I'm not very good at apportioning time in Ireland.

I'd encourage you to consider just doing Wales and Scotland (with maybe a bit of England depending on routing). With 6-10 days in each, you just have time to really hit the highlights and allow suffcient travel time.

On behalf of my Irish cousins I submit that (in opposition to the above post) you could skip Wales and Scotland and focus on Ireland!

Seriously, I think you can strike a decent balance between them.

I don't understand why when a poster says they want to see either Scotland, England, Wales AND Ireland, they are told to skip Ireland. I have seen this over and over. It may be sound advice if someone has a week and is narrowly focused on one country, but I think it is a disservice, without understanding the interest/motivation, to suggest skipping one versus the other.

In this case, the OP didn't even mention an interest in England, but it is being suggested instead of Ireland?!!

With 18 days you can carve out an interesting intinerary in Scotland and Ireland, especially since you are willing to forgo cities. You won't see everything, but you'll get a nice flavor.

We spent one month seeing Ireland and one month seeing England, Scotland & Wales. On the ESW trip we spent one week in Scotland and one week in Wales and two weeks in England (one week just in London). We did not run out of things to do and see in Ireland in one month. Next trip back to that neighborhood - revist London for maybe 2 weeks. As you see from our experience, and everybody's
will be different, do not short change Ireland. I would suggest you slim down your itinerary to spend 16 to 18 days seeing only England or Ireland with the knowledge that you will be back to see the rest.

Ahhhh! This is what I had hoped for! Enough to see and do, that one trip will not be enough. So, to condense a little, which one first, since one trip is not going to suffice? My paternal side is Irish, and my maternal is Scottish. I feel like I could spend months in each! A little conjecture if you please. Thanks again! Jeff

Me again, please advise as to the best time of year to try this adventure. I would think early summer/mid summer, but I have never been there. thanks again! Jeff

I think you could do both Ireland and Scotand as long as you are willing to skip Wales. Also, understand you will just be hitting the highlights. But you would get nice sampling of highlights. If it wre me, I would pick one or the other and see the country in more depth, but it's a matter of personal preference. If you decide to pick just one, flip a coing. They are both wonderful, and you will have fabulous trip to either country.

I would not restrict your trip to summer; May and September would also be nice. We have taken two trips to Scotland -- May and September. September was wonderful. May was a pretty cold in the highlands, at least when we were there. We prefer it to be on the cold side though. If you prefer warm weather, the odds will be much better in the summer. Our two trips to Ireland were in July and August, and it was fine (and not particularly warm). I was worried it would be crowded, but it wasn't bad.

You can absolutely do Ireland & Scotland in 16-18 days, and you'll be able to see a heck of a lot of both countries. Never been to Wales, can't help you there.

Didn't mean to offend you Michael. I just prefer to do "in depth" trips rather than highlights, most of the time. And my personal preference is Scotland and Wales rather than Ireland. Ireland does not have the rail service that Scotland and Wales does and that rather puts me off spending much time there. If the OP wants in-depth, chooseing either Ireland or Scotland/Wales would allow that. I mentioned England because some routes (we travel by train- we don't drive in Europe) would take him through parts of England (the borders, etc.).

Nooooo!!!! You cannot possibly skip Ireland!!!! It's God's own country. 10 days in Ireland 8 days in Scotland, will give you a reasonable highlights package. Let's face it. We could travel to these countries for 6 months and not see all there is on offer. Most travellers, do 'a highlights' trip.

We've been to both. (I assume you are OK with a rental car?) If I had this time frame, I would fly into Shannon and spend seven days in Ireland, concentrating on County Kerry and County Galway (not the city, but Connemara and a route to the Aran islands for a day trip). Then I would fly to either Glasgow or Edinburgh (whichever has the best connection for you) and make an eleven day loop into Skye,Wester Ross,Glencoe, Inverness, and Edinburgh including a one day drive down into the Borders for the abbeys. Good web sites for you to check out are irelandexpert.com, secretscotland. com, and undiscoverered scotland.com. If you would like more specific details, send me a PM.

I think yes!

We always try to choose trips that focus on one cultural area (that may or may not be spread to multiple countries). Scotland and Ireland fit together well (Wales, not so much).

The amount of time you have will always be an issue. But considering that half the people to post questions here seem to want to be able to see half of Europe in under 10 days, your time frame is luxurious by comparison.

I would divide the time about 60/40 Ireland/Scotland. See if you can fly into Shannon airport in Ireland's west to avoid Galway, if you're not interested in cities. Then either work your way overland toward Belfast and take a ferry to Scotland, or fly from Shannon to Glasgow. Then work out some sort of loop in Scotland that gets you to the highlands & back to an airport in in 5-7 days.

You will have a fantastic time. Sure, you could split the trip into two different years - who wouldn't want to spend a month in each if resources were unlimited. But if you have many places in the world you want to see (like we do) you may not want to spend so much precious time & money in one pretty small geographical (and cultural) area.