I am considering taking my mom on the Scotland trip but I am concerned about the walking for my mom. She has had 2 knee replacements and a hip replacement. I see that it lists strenuous walking are there work arounds for this? Also it says that there night by stairs at the accomdations is this every night or occassional?
Ginger
Posted by
Florida
610 posts
As for the walking, you can always skip anything that is too strenuous. I didn't think that any of the days on the Scotland tour were strenuous, but I don't have the same health concerns. We usually walked at a fairly slow pace, but there is a lot of standing. A lot of the sites had as much or as little walking as you wanted. For example, at Glencoe we stopped at a scenic overlook and then visited the visitors center, so there was no hiking. At the Hermitage, there was a fairly level, easy to follow path and everyone walked as much of it as they wanted. They have added a visit to a park since we went, so I'm not sure about that one. As for the hotels, we had at least some stairs in each one. There were often some room assignments on the first floor. Maybe you could contact the office to see if you could be given preference for those rooms? Not sure if they could accommodate that or not. They may be able to tell you if there are elevators at their chosen hotels. We've only been on 2 tours, but the Scotland one had much less walking than the GAS tour in my opinion, and there is lots of time to rest on the bus.
Posted by
The Heartland USA
8966 posts
gingersv, you should really call the tour desk at RS and talk to them. I've not done this tour, but if its like the others, its hard to see how a work-around could be done.
Posted by
New York City, NY, USA
5678 posts
I've not done the tour, but I've visited Scotland quite a bit and there is usually a fair bit of walking. Edinburgh itself is quite hilly, but you may want to look into ways to make sure the walking is for the actually touring rather than transportation from place to place. For example, they start day 2 with a "hike" through history in the National Museum. I suspect that they call it a hike as you start on the ground floor with pre-history and the 21st century is on the top floor and so you are climbing through time as it were. The next stop is the castle. I bet that they walk it. You might want to do a taxi so that your mother can save her legs for the Castle itself. There is climbing in the castle so you might want to check this out. I don't know where he's taking you in the Cairngorms, but there are a lot of lovely walks that go around the lochs and not up the braes. :) You really have control of the walking at Culloden. Cawdor Castle is not a huge place and the gardens are beautiful, but not huge either. Urquhart Castle is a ruin, and so , once again you can control how much up and down and clambering around you do. There is a nice visitor center with a film on the story of the castle. When you go to Iona, you do have to walk to the Abbey from the ferry, but it looks like you can pre-book a taxi. And lastly, you may want to check into this for Stirling Castle.
It's a beautiful, friendly place and I hope you both have a wonderful trip.
Pam