Scottish Islands and Highlands advice thread

[Severed799]

You can fly to Inverness from Manchester?

[jont2001]

yep you can. There’s a direct flight to Stornoway as well.

[jont2001]

sorry, flight isn’t direct from Manchester to Stornoway - my bad.

[Fintans_Cat]

It’s amazing.

[Severed799]

That wasn’t meant to be a question

[Severed799]

YO, so many months later this is actually happening next couple days, we will be:

• Driving up A9 to Inverness, with a wee stop at Aviemore to have a bit of an explore and a bite
• Probably spend a night or two checking out Inverness?
• Driving around the highlands, either to Skye or further north?
• Driving down the West Coast, past Fort William and Glencoe, stopping at Inervary/Loch Fyne for some dinner

So I guess specific recommendations (other than what’s already here) now are, what’s worth checking out in Inverness itself?
What’s best for our day exploring the North? Skye or further up?

Cheers!

[casinobay]

If you have time I’d not drive up the A9 to Inverness and take a detour to the road that takes you alongside Loch Ness. IE - cut off the A9 at Dalwhinnie along the A86 then up the A82. It’s fairly stunning.

Also, if you have the chance and time head right to the north of Scotland and drive along the A836 and A838 from Thurso to Tongue and Durness and then down the west coast A835 to Ullapool and onwards to Skye. It is an absolutely beautiful drive, but some of the roads are tight so it takes longer than it looks because of all the stop offs for pictures and to take in the scenery. I’d knock off one of the nights in Inverness to do this.

Glencoe…fucking WOW!!!

[Severed799]

We were planning on going down Loch Ness on the way back down towards fort William, is it a big difference?

[Severed799]

Also we are only really using Inverness as a base to explore from so we won’t be there loads, probably just for an evening

[SenorDingDong]

The A82 is pretty much better than the A9 the whole way, if you’re starting from Glasgow that’s the road I’d take (although if you’re coming back that way then fair enough).

[Severed799]

Yeah idea was
Day 1: Glasgow to Inverness via aviemore (so a9)
Day 2: Explore north/Skye
Day 3: Inverness to Glasgow on a82 with a stop at Loch Fyne/Inveraray

It’s just the day 2 but we need to decide on I.e what exactly to do while up north

[SenorDingDong]

Ah right. Don’t really have any specific suggestions, I’d just go and explore Skye probably.

[NotEvenDreams]

Aviemore- nice walks around Loch Morlich, Pityoulish or Loch Garten- there’s an osprey nesting site near Loch Garten which you may or may not be interested in (no idea if it’s a good time of year for going there).

You probably won’t need a huge amount of time to check out Inverness. The only place I usually pop into is Leakey’s bookshop on Church Street (converted church selling second hand books which is a nice place to pop into for an obligatory bowl of soup).

Towards Skye the village of Plockton’s nice (on the mainland north of the bridge) and am a bit fan of the mountains around Torridon (but am a hiking twat, so I would).

For Skye itself, the Fairy Pools are stunning, but it’s a hike to get there. Loads of places for good views (Old Man of Storr, Quiraing to the north, but again quite a trek, Loch Coruisk and surrounding Cullins further south) but not sure how much you’ll want to tackle in a day.

The A82 on one leg of the journey is a good call, although the road can be agonisingly slow at times. Is worth it for the drive through Glencoe as has already been mentioned. Possibly is better coming at it from Glasgow for views when driving, but if you’re not in a rush and taking time to look around, the direction of travel won’t matter that much.

[Severed799]

This is awesome, thanks!

[NotEvenDreams]

Hope you get decent weather for it!

[laelfy]

Would recommend Loch Coruisk on the south west side, you can take boat trips from Elgol although they probably need to be booked in advance. It’s possible to drive round Skye in a day to see most things although it’ll be hard going on the driver. If you’re having dinner on Skye at a weekend consider booking ahead as the restaurants get busy.

[Severed799]

It’s meant to be!

[Witches]

Hi hi, I’m from the Black Isle which is just over the bridge from the ol’ sneck. Inverness is not the most exciting place on earth as you’ve probably gathered. The Black Isle bar on church street is pretty nice and it’s two secs from Leakey’s. There’s also a beer shop on castle street… and the castle tavern is pretty good too a bit further up. And apparently it does not bad pub grub. There’s also the inverness museum. If you fancy a wee trip elsewhere you could visit the Black Isle! There’s the pub me and all my friends used to frequent, it’s called The Anderson, it’s in Fortrose and it has a fuck Ton of Belgian beers and hundreds of whiskies on offer, you can venture into either the public bar or the whisky bar, It might have recently closed though so I would check that first before making the effort to go all that way. Velocity in inverness is a nice wee cafe too. And a walk along the river is quite nice on a good evening, there’s the islands a bit further along.

[Severed799]

Lovely stuff, cheers!

[Severed799]

Thanks for your help y’all, we had a blast!

Drove up a9 and stopped at aviemore to climb Craigellachie

Then onto Inverness to our b&b. Went into town and ate/watched football in the castle tavern garden (was lovely, cracking food and Cromarty on cask)

Had one in Black Isle bar too before retiring home.

Day 2 we ended up doing Applecross to Ullapool which was pretty breathtaking. We had intended to do Ullapool to Durness but ran out of time due to wee roads with sheep/cows on them

Went back to Inverness and had pizza at Black Isle bar for dinner.

Day 3 we went down a89 which was pretty magical, stopping at Loch Ness, Ben Nevis (Fort William), Glencoe, Black Mount/Bridge or Orchy and Inverugas on Loch Lomond. This was the only (inevitable) rainy day but it kinda made it more atmospheric

Then yesterday did a hill walk up comic hill (other side of Loch Lomond/start of the highlands) as we still had the car

Cheers for your advice/would happily have done more if we could but I think we did pretty well, big shout out to my girlfriend for being an amazing driver too!