Our first ever trip to Scotland was during a short city break to Edinburgh with friends. We absolutely loved the city, and city life is fun, but we were also left feeling hungry for the incredible scenery that Scotland and the Highlands are known for. So, ready to celebrate our first wedding anniversary, we packed up the car (including Lady) and made the drive 10 hours from home, into the Highlands. Here are our Scottish Highlands roadtrip highlights.
Isle of Skye
Visiting the Isle of Skye has looong been a bucket list location for us, so finally making the journey here was a huge moment. We were only able to stay for the day, but it was enough to give us a taste of what this stunning island has to offer and we will definitely be back here!
The Isle of Skye is known for its rugged landscapes and it absolutely did not disappoint. The whole place feels prehistoric, with many of Skye’s imposing mountains formed by volcanic eruptions millions of years ago. It hurt my head to imagine a time, before humans, when dinosaurs would have freely roamed this part of the world. At the Northern end of the island, you can actually see fossilised dinosaur prints in the rocks.
Our first port of call were the famous Fairy Pools – a series of waterfalls, said to be a vibrant blue colour (which unfortunately they were not – I assume the grey weather that day dulled the pools as much as it dulled the sky). But we were still no less impressed and we loved our time hiking up along the River Brittle to visit the Fairy Pools.
From here we made our way into the cute fishing village of Portree for some lunch and a wander. However, only spending 1 day on the Isle of Skye meant we had to be ruthless with our time, so we only stopped for a quick lunch, before we hopped back in the car to tour more of the landscape. We drove the main loop from Portree up to the North of the island. The weather was sadly not fully on our side, but when we visit again I would love to hike The Old Man of Storr and explore a little more of Skye’s rugged coastline. We stopped off at one of the Isle’s most northern beaches and took in the surrounding views, where we could see as far as the rugged mountain skyline of the Isle of Harris.
Distilleries!
There are lots of incredible things that Scotland is famous for, and one of those is making a damn good whiskey! In fact there are reportedly over 150 whiskey distilleries spread across Scotland! “When in Rome” we thought, it would be rude not to sample a few of the local “delicacies”. But where do you start?
We were staying just outside of the Cairngorms, home to some of the best Highland whiskey distilleries, so this made the shortlist a little easier to tackle, but it’s no fun if only one of you gets to be the Chief Taster while the other is the designated driver. Thankfully we came across Wow Scotland Tours. They ran a small organised tour, which picked us up in Inverness (not far from where we were staying) and gave us a tour of some of the most amazing distilleries. In this jam packed day, we visited the distilleries of Tomatin, Glenlivet, Glenfarclas, and Aberlour. At each distillery we had a full tour of the facilities and a few drams to sample too! My personal favourite was Glenlivet. The distillery itself was really nice – good tour, great facilities, and their whiskey was equally my favourite too. This was also followed by Tomatin, which is a much smaller distillery.
We also visited the Speyside Cooperage, where they make all the barrels for the distilleries. Here you get to watch the team working at the Cooperage and the process of making the huge barrels! It was really interesting and a highlight of the tour. The icing on the cake for the tour was that it was organised the day before our anniversary, so this was the perfect way to celebrate!
Seeing the Hogwarts Express
We drove over towards the area of Fort William / Ben Nevis to see the Glenfinnan Viaduct. This is the iconic railway bridge featured in so many of the Harry Potter films.
As soon as I was old enough to understand that you could actually visit the Viaduct and see it for yourself, AND the steam train actually crosses the bridge regularly, I just had to see it! At the time Oli wasn’t a Harry Potter fan (he has at least now seen the films and said he liked them), but he begrudgingly came along to see it (earning himself some husband points along the way!) But we both absolutely loved the Viaduct. Watching the train puff its way across the bridge is a very cool sight to see, but combined with the incredible views and scenery, it instantly became a trip highlight!
Eilean Donan Castle
Eilean Donan is probably the prettiest castle we saw during our Scottish Highlands road trip and is said to also be the most photographed fortress in the whole of Scotland! And for good reason – it is a beauty of a castle and the surrounding hils and loch just make for the most perfect backdrop.
We bought tickets and had an explore inside the castle which was interesting, but to me, the most impressive part is looking at the castle itself. We visited on our way to the Isle of Skye so we didn’t have loads of time to spare, but we made the most of exploring the surrounding areas and admiring the views of the castle.
Loch Affric hike
One of my absolute top Scottish Highlands road trip highlights is definitely our hike around Loch Affric. Located just over 1 hours drive south of Inverness, there is a 11 mile circuit trail which goes all the way around the loch, providing the most stunning – and I really mean stunning scenery I think we saw during our whole trip. Perhaps even rivaling Isle of Skye as my favourite scenery?
It was a dry but moody day, with loads of low level cloud hugging the surrounding mountain tops, and to be honest this made the area look even more beautiful. Sure, a lovely, clear, sunny day would have been lovely – who doesn’t love a hike in the sunshine! But the low clouds just made everything everything look so much more dramatic. Our photos really don’t do the area justice.
We love a long hike also. If we’re not feeling semi-exhausted by the end of it, then it wasn’t enough of a challenge in our opinion. We visited in July so although it was cloudy it was super muggy. It took us about 4 hours to complete the hike and combined with the muggy conditions, we were well and truly done by the end of the hike. Mission accomplished! I would recommend this hike to anybody. It can be a bit of a long slog, but the views make it all worth while and the hike is pretty easy, following a path for most of the way, with the odd stream here and there which needed crossing.
Macallan Whiskey Distillery
Yes I know another distillery, haven’t we already covered this off? But this was not just any distillery and is certainly deserving of its own feature. Back in the day we always loved watching Suits (where our fellow Harvey Spector fans at??) so we of course had to visit the Macallan distillery while we were in the area.
Located just outside of the Cairngorms National Park, near Dufftown, the Macallan Distillery is situated in the heart of the Macallan Estate, hidden within the landscape like some kind of Bond villain’s lair. We knew as soon as we walked up to the entrance that this place was going to be special and it didn’t disappoint.
The distillery has recently been built, with sustainability in mind and with a brand new visitor experience centre to boot. The distillery was slick and literally ran like a well oiled machine – what else did we expect from one of the most premium brands of whiskey available? The whole thing was incredibly impressive and a visit here should definitely be on the cards for any whiskey fan. We didn’t come away with a bottle of Macallan (that was just a tad out of our price bracket) but it is where we saw our first “highland coo”!
New Slains Castle
Visiting Loch Ness
Exploring the Cairngorms
Dunnottar Castle
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