Roadtrip through Scotland
Day 1: Zeebrugge – Hull
Day 2: Hull – York – Glasgow
Day 3: Glasgow – Isle of Arran
Day 4: Isle of Arran – Glencoe
Day 5: Glencoe – Ben Nevis – Acharacle
Day 6: Acharacle – Fort William – Loch Ness – Inverness – Helmsdale
Day 7: Helmsdale – Thurso – Burghead
Day 8: Burghead – Edinburgh
Day 9: Edinburgh – Hull
Day 10: Hull – Zeebrugge
Day 1: Zeebrugge – Hull
After parking our car on the Pride of Bruges P&O ferry we were informed by staff to collect the keys at deck 4. Tip: if you want 2 keys, you have to ask for it. This is a smooth process and you see they are really used to this.
The dinner in the buffet restaurant is 22.5£ per person and a bottle of wine costs 18.50£. Breakfast in the morning costs 11£ and if you book them together on the evening before, you get 2 or 3 pounds of reduction. Both dinner and breakfast are served via a very extensive buffet. Non-alcoholic drinks and coffee are included in the price. You don’t have to stay in the restaurant to finish your bottle of wine. You can bring it to any bar on the ferry without a problem. If you want a windows seat in the restaurant, you’ll have to go early and you’ll have to explicitly ask for it.
On board you can select between the Lounge with live music or the Show Bar with activities, DJ and some live band. They keep you busy if you want 🙂
Day 2: Hull – York – Glasgow
All went fine with our overnight trip until we drove from the ferry. We had to queue about 20 – 25 minutes at the UK border control. But hey, don’t hurry, we are on a holiday with some nice tracks on the radio. From Hull we headed to York, to break up the trip towards Glasgow. In our mind we would only stop for a quick visit to the York Cathedral, but we stayed longer in York than first thought off, which is normal with a road trip. York has everything a city needs, ranging from a Cathedral, and old city part with pedestrian only small streets, a city park, plenty of bars and restaurants and a river. The only thing it lacks is parking. As we arrived early, we got one of the last spots on a public paying parking, but when leaving, we saw up to 10 cars queuing to conquer a spot! We wandered around for about 2 hours.
From York we headed North towards Carlisle to see Hadrian’s Wall. Although it’s not in Scotland, nor does it draw the border between UK & Scotland, we wanted to see this famous wall. Following the A69 you will see several signs to Hadrian’s wall, but we selected the spot in Upper Denton as the road towards is very scenic and you can see the wall pretty well. On the other hand, it’s an old wall 🙂 So depending of your time and interest, this is a visit you might want to skip.
We continued North and crossed the ‘border’ with Scotland and headed to Glasgow where we reserved the only sleeping place of our trip up front. All the rest was to be planned on a day by day basis. As we arrived after 18:00 parking was free in front of the door.
We did not really like Glasgow as a city. Maybe it was the weather which was not great, and close to rain. Maybe it was because we only arrived in the center by 18:30 and the shops in the famous Buchanan Street. We walked up to the Glasgow Cathedral. Via Necropolis and George Square we decided to go for dinner. We were there during the Glasgow Celtic Treble festivities (25/05/2019). Thousands of Celtic fans gathered to celebrate the treble, but the ceremonie was cancelled due to fan behavior and too crowded. We saw plenty of drunk people cheering, singing and dancing. Quite funny to see, but i’m sure plenty of people will have been less enthousiatic morning after.
Ingram Wynd was selected for dinner as it looked nice from the outside. The inside was also nice and there was a lot of atmosphere. Food was great and affordable for city norm. The reviews on the internet were not that great, but we can’t complain. The service was fast and friendly.
Glasgow Central Cosy Double Room: The hosts Martin and Rene have a great apartment right in the center on the 7th floor, close to the station. The bedroom is large enough and hosts a double bed. The clean private bathroom is just next doors. We were allowed to use the kitchen and living room, located on their duplex floor, but we didn’t do that. If you need a place to stay in Glasgow, don’t doubt when booking this one. If you need anything during your stay, there is a Tesco supermarkt around the corner which opens early and stays open late. Convenient to buy some pastries in the morning.
Day 3: Glasgow – Isle of Arran
When leaving Glasgow you might want to spot the famous Titan crane which you can also visit. Even from a distance it looked quite impressive. We headed to Claonaig over Inverrary but we decided not to stop as we wanted to make the ferry. Anyway we would pass back here a day later (see lessons learnt). We were a bit late an luckily the ferry was also 3 minutes late, otherwise we would have missed it. Return ferry costs £31.90 for 2 passengers and a car. When we arrived in Lochranza we drove straight to Corrie where we wanted to hike towards Goatfell, the highest point of the Isle of Arran. You can hike to Goatfell from Brodick or from Corrie, but Brodick is more crowded, so you might pick Corrie if you want to see less people.
The hike starts via a steep tarmac path and soon you have to follow a sign to the right where the real path starts. The path climbs not that steep towards and later next to the waterfall. You will then reach a plateau before the steep last hunderd meters start. Here the weather changed and we got some heavy rain, which lasted for about 10 minutes. When it stopped raining, the wind become very strong. After some time Marie-Claire was almost blown a way by the wind. When the wind got stronger, a bit later, I was also almost blown away. Not a very pleasant feeling. When ever there was a strong blow of the wind, we quickly had to bend through the knees and stay low to the ground. It confirms the weather can change quickly in Scotland. When we reached the top, where we were supposed to have an incredible view, we saw nothing but clouds and mist. The wind still blowing strong, so we turned back quickly. While heading back down, the weather became better, but the top was still in clouds, and we had no intention to turn back. The Strava track if you want to do the same hike: Goatfell with incredible wind
Back at our car, around 16:00, it was more than time to book a hotel and we found something in Whiting Bay on the east side of the island. As there was a next day public holiday 3 out of the 4 restaurants in Whiting Bay were closed. There was only 1 restaurant open and as we were quite late it was fully booked. So we had to drive back to Lamlash where we selected the Glenisle Hotel and Bistro based on its TripAdvisor score, but we had mixed feelings. Although service was friendly, the selected lasagne was served cold so we send it back to the kitchen. Might have been an exceptional mistake off course.
The Burlington Guesthouse: We had room number 3 on the first floor with en-suite bathroom. The hotel reflects the calmness and timelessness of the area but off course you could experience this as a bit out-dated. The bed is fine and the bathroom is ok, but don’t expect the best ever. For a one night stop over it will be OK for most of the people, I think.
Day 4: Isle of Arran – Glencoe
In the morning we drove back from Whiting Bay towards Lochranza to take the ferry back to Cloanig. We did a quick visit at the visitor center of the Arran Distilery before heading to the ferry. Depending on the moment of the ferry and your arrival, it might be a good idea to park on the ferry waiting places and check out the well preserved Lochranza Castle. You can easily monitor the ferry and be back in time. Like this you can safe some time and not take the chance the ferry would be full.
As you can read in the lessons learnt we took the same road back to Inveraray but this time we did take the time to visit the authentic city. It’s not very big, and mainly consisting out of 1 main street, but it has a special atmosphere.Nevertheless, we only spend a small half hour. We decided not to visit the castle, it’s famous and beautifull seen from the road passing by, but we had other priorities.
We headed in the direction of Glencoe where we wanted to see The Three Sisters of Glencoe. We parked on the parking lot next to the road. it can get crowded over there, but as we came at the end of the afternoon, we got a free spot. So either go early or late. On the parking lot there is almost every day a guy playing bagpipe. We wanted to hike to the Lost Valley of Glencoe, but somewhere we must have taken the wrong turn, as we ended in another valley. Doesn’t matter too much in the end. We had a great walk, but not an easy one. We walked 2.5 km up the hill covering 750 altitude meters. Quite intensive according to us.
When you cross the small bridge over the river, or around that bridge, you have to change for The Lost Valley, but we followed the well-worn path to the right as some people came from that direction. The path climbs up with stairs which are too small according to us. They climb easily up, but going down on these kind of stairs is very difficult according to us. And must be slippery when rainy. We kept climbing and at some point we came close to the water and we had to cross a bigger rock. This part might be tricky for smaller people or people not found of heights, like Marie-Claire. Coming back, when you will have to climb up this rock will be way easier, but now you just have to get over it. As from there the path keeps going up and maybe even steeper. Near the top they were working on the path and you have to find your own way. Also this might not be appreciated by people with heights as it might feel uncomfortable. However, we can’t easily give up halfway, so we wanted to reach the top. Then you come to some kind of plateau where you have some pools of water and a marvelous view. However, later on that day we learned this is not the Lost Valley of Glencoe 🙂 Our Strava can be found here: Glencoe XXL
Clachaig Inn: on advise of the owner of our B&B we went to Clachaig Inn, which is a 5 minute drive. You have several bars in the same building. He advised us to go to the Boots bar. When you arrive, you have to enter via the back of the building. According the website the bar is unique and they are right. There is a great atmosphere. The food come from the same kitchen as the lounge restaurant. The food was really tastefull and a nice portion. They also have plenty of draft beers and malt whiskies. If you are around, we strongly advise to go for dinner in this place.
Park View B&B: Lucky that we booked the last room in a radius of 1 hour drive, we could not be too picky. The room was big enough and came as usual with coffee amenities. The breakfast was served in the dining room and was royal. Freshly baked bread, meat, cheese, cereals, and many more. However, you have to notice that the room has a shared bath room. You share it with 1 other room. The bathroom is not big and the toilet is standing almost in the shower, but for a quick stopover it was OK. Breakfast was normally from 08:00 but the owner served us 30 minutes earlier so we could leave on time for climbing Ben Nevis.
Day 5: Glencoe – Ben Nevis – Acharacle
The owner of the small B&B arranged an early breakfast to ensure we could leave on time for our hike. We drove up to Glen Nevis where you can start the hike either from the visitor center parking lot or from the youth hostel. We selected the last one as it tends to be less crowded, it is however way more steep before it joins the path leaving from the visitor center. You can read a very detailed review of our adventure towards the summit of Ben Nevis in this blog post: Ben Nevis via Carn Mor Dearg!
In short, we are very satisfied we took the Carn Mor Dearg route, but if we would have known up front, we would have taken the dull tourist path. We had a great day with spectacular views and will always cherish this experience.
As we were proud on our achievement we wanted to buy a bottle of Ben Nevis and went quickly to the distillery of Ben Nevis. The distillery closes at 17:00 so we only had time to do a quick visit of the visitor center. We bought the regular 10 years old Ben Nevis.
From Fort William we wanted to head closer to Isle of Skye, and as hotel options were very limited, we headed in the direction of Acharacle where we booked a night in Loch Shiel Hotel. While riding on the A830 you pass the Glenfinnan Viaduct which is very famous as the “Hogwarts Express” passess here in the Harry Potter movies. The train passess there twice a day and then it really gets busy. However, it did not fit our travel schedule. The weather was fine, and below (filterless) pictures is quite awesome according toe me. Still, it might have been more magical if the steam train would have passed, but then again, you can’t have it all and during each travel you have to leave some things for another visit.
Loch Shiel Hotel: Located in the middle of nowhere we had a great experience in our last minute booked hotel. The room with a view on the lake came with a comfortable bed and a super good shower, which was really awesome after hiking up to the summit of Ben Nevis.The included breakfast was made fresh by the cook. There were several options but I went for the American pancakes 🙂
During dinner we were looking to book a ferry towards Skye and we learned there was a disruption and no tickets could be booked. So we decided to skip the Isle of Skye and go sooner North. This is one of the things of a road trip, you have to be flexible and it bring an extra dimension for a holiday. Skye is known to be a very beautiful part of Scotland, but as said before, we’ll visit that part a next time…
Day 6: Acharacle – Fort William – Loch Ness – Inverness – Helmsdale
After the well prepared breakfast we checked out and headed back to Fort William. We took the route via Strontian which was very beautiful and peaceful and mainly consisted out of a single track. We took the ferry to Corran and via the A82 we arrived in Fort William.
As we could not visit Fort William after our hike to Ben Nevis, we wanted to spend some time this morning, but in fact, Fort William is not that special. There is a main street which is mainly for pedestrians with shops and bars. We went for coffee and some food in The Wilcat cafe. An ecofriendly bar with fresh products and a good atmosphere. Clearly the most popular place in the main street.
We are not really museum people, but as the West highland Museum was free we decided to give it a try. It’s not that big but has some nice things to see. If you have a spare half an hour, you can pay this place a visit. There are some boxes for fundraising if you want to contribute like we did. It covers different themes like the war, clothing, ancient objects and many more.
Before heading further north, we visited Neptune’s Staircase just outside the center, on the A830. Which is a staircase lock comprising eight locks on the Caledonian Canal. Built by Thomas Telford between 1803 and 1822, it is the longest staircase lock in Britain. There were no boats passing, so that was a pity. Maybe you have more luck in weekends. Further it looks cooler from videos and pictures made by drones, as when you walk next to the locks, you can’t really overlook the magnitude of the project. So we would advise only to visit when you have some spare time. You won’t miss much if you don’t visit this place.
When we were ready to head further North, we targetted Inverness and without having it planned we passed at Loch Ness. As this is just a loch like many others, it’s famous for Nessy, so as we passed anyway, we quickly stopped to have some lunch. We decided to split our trip to the north in 2 parts and selected Helmsdale as stop over. A small city near the coast
Day 7: Helmsdale – Thurso – Burghead
After a breakfast bought in the local Spar we visited The Emigrants before continuing on the famous North Coast 500, also known as NC 500. We did parts of it, as the whole route is just below 1000 km or 516 miles. We drove up the route, but then left the route to go straight to Thurso where we had coffee and some cones and local cookies and visited the Wolfburn distillery. We read on internet that you could just pass by for a visit, but that changed. They now have fixed tours at 14:00. We were still able to enter the small distillery and from the door you can overview the entire distillery. They created a very small shop and have a tasting room. Although the tour was at 14:00, the responsible offered us 2 whiskies to taste and still told us a couple of words which we really appreciated.
The famous North Coast 500 has some nice sceneries, but it did not bring us what we expected from it. Maybe we took the wrong part of the road, or we are spoiled after trips to Iceland, Canada, etc… where they also have awesome scenery roads. Further, it is very hard to take pictures of those nice sceneries and also they don’t have many viewpoints in Scotland. That is something they could improve according to us, some (small) parking spots on some strategical places.
From Thurso we follwed NC 500 towards the West, passing in Bettyhill and Tongue where we turned South back in the direction of Lairg. That area was rough and very silent. We only crossed a few cars. Make sure you are prepared and have a filled your fuel tank before starting this journey. Also, don’t expect much possibilities for food and drinks. A long the road we stopped in the Altnaharra hotel for a coffee. We stopped every now and then to take some more time to enjoy the silence and the views.
We left north of Scotland and headed back over inverness to the East and headed in the direction of the Speyside. We selected the small village Burghead to spend the night before starting our journey back South. Burghead is a very small and silent village and we selected the Harbour Inn to end our day and have some drinks and food.
Harbour Inn: This small authentic place is very living. There are a handfull rooms but the main activity is the downstairs bar. You would not expect this, but it’s huge and when we came down from our room to the bar it was full of locals having drinks and food. While Marie-Claire headed for an evening run, I put seat at the bar to work at our blog while having a beer.
Day 8: Burghead – Dufftown – Edinburgh
We started the day with a real Scotisch breakfast and Marie-Claire even got some haggis! in only took a small piece, but at the end, it tasted quite OK. We learned also that the Harbour Inn was for sale for almost 2 years. The older couple wants to retire, so if you read this, and want to take over an authentic bar with 5 rooms, hurry up, it might still be for sale 🙂
The first bottle of Whisky Tom ever bought was Glenfiddich and later multiple followed, so this distellery has always been special, certainly as I got the Glenfiddich 30 years as a present from Marie-Claire and my mother when I turned 30 years. We decided to pass by in Dufftown and at least check out the visitor center and the shop.
We arrived a little before 10:00 and as you could not book online tours we thought nothing as available anymore. As we were reading the information on the walls, we overheard a person still booking some last minute tickets to the exxplorer tour (1h30 – 10£). We jumped in and were also able to book 2 tickets for the tour that ould start 2 minutes later. Tom favoured this one than the planned Edradour later on that day.
The Explorer tour starts with a 10 minute video about the history of the distillery and the family Grant. After you visit several areas and you end with a tasting. Our guide, Paul, was awesome, as he made quite some jokes.
We have visited a smaller and a bigger distillery and which to chose will be very subjective. We try to visit a small one for the authenticy and a bigger one because it’s more impressive. So we’ll leave it up to you to chose which to visit. But if you want to visit the one you want on the moment you want, we advise you to book up front. These tours are constantly getting more and more famous and reaching a broader audience. So to avoid dissapointment, book in advance or be flexible like us, and see which one can take you and let them surprise you.
At the end of the tour we visited the shop, but this was a letdown as it’s very fancy, not authentic and very expensive. We were not charmed with this shop and here they could do better. The shops in Arran, Ben Nevis and Wolfburn were way more cosy and fun to explore.
From here we headed to Edinburgh and on the same road of Glenfiddich you also have the Speyside Cooperage, where they create barrels for plenty of distilleries, but at Glenfiddich they still make their on. There are thousands of barrels which is quite impressive to see, but we decided to not spend time and move to Edinburgh, which was quite a trip and we had some things to visit before heading to the center.
First we visited the Falkirk Wheel, which is a rotating boat lift in central Scotland, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. The lift is named after Falkirk, the town in which it is located. It reconnects the two canals for the first time since the 1930s. It opened in 2002 as part of the Millennium Link project
After we headed shortly to the The Kelpies. which are 30-metre-high horse-head sculptures depicting kelpies. Quite impressive to see. They are located in a big park ideal for walking and relaxing.
Before heading to the center of Edinburgh we took the time to visit the famous and impressive Forth Bridge. When you drive to the border of the river, you can see the bridge pretty well and feel how incredible this buiding is. It’s the world’s second-longest single cantilever span, as the one in Quebec is longer. It is also on the Unesco world heritage list.
Due to all the attractions we visited during the day, we arrived later in the city than planned and we hit some traffic jam. So you might take this into account when driving to Edinburgh and avoid trying to go to the center on a Friday evening around 5 PM 🙂
After checking in to our appartment for the night we went directly to the center to get some impression. We immediate liked Edinburgh way more than Glasgow. You really can’t compare these 2 cities. We wandered a bit around before going for dinner Little White Pig, which is rather a small but cosy restaurant just away from the crowd. Close to the main attractions all restaurants seemed too crowded to us. Service was great and food was delicious.
After the dinner we decided to go for the Royal Mile, as we doubted to get this organised the next morning. We only arrived quite late and we were almost completely alone. We enjoyed this after dinner walk. You can see that during the day this place must be very busy. There were also some nicely lighted buildings and to us it felt safe to walk here. From here we decided to call it a day and walked back to our AirBnB place. Our strava track you can find here: Edinburgh city walk
Edinburgh private room and bathroom: Just outside the center we stayed at this awesome place! First we were welcomed by Neil, the very friendly father of Jessica. There is free parking on premis, the room is spotless clean and the complete new bathroom has everything you need. This place is very cosy and it’s a pity we could not spend a bit more time here. The bus stops right in front of the door and takes you straight into the center in 5 to 10 minutes. In the evening we walked back home, which is around 20 minutes, depending on where you are in the city of course. If you need a place in Edinburgh, think about this one, you won’t regret it! (And check out our reduction page to use our code to earn some credit!)
Day 9: Edinburgh – Hull
After an shower we left quite early as we had a 4 hour drive towards Hull. We also learned there is no real highway and thus you know it will take some time…
The ferry leaves at 18:30 in Hull, and we had to check in 90 minutes in advance, so we showed up around 15:30 in Hull to spend a little hour in the free Streeflife Museum. This was really a great museum for both kids and adults, although (older) adults will really be thrown back in time, which is really nice.
We queued for boarding around 17:00 and checked into our inside cabin by 17:45 with number 1092. The room was on 6th deck (blue) and was similar to the one when we left towards Scotland. Again we conclude that an inside cabin is a good choice, as we went to sleep around 23:30, got up, took a shower and left our room.
We went to the Show bar on the 5th floor to have a drink while leaving the harbour. At 17:52 we went to the restaurant (Brasserie) as it opened at 18:00 and we were hungry. A very wise choice! There were already people queueing. When the waiter wanted to assign us a table we again nicely asked for a window seat. if you don’t ask it, you won’t gt it. We enjoyed again the buffet (22.5£ per person) and a bottle of red wine (18.50£). We advise to go on time, as the entire evening people had to wait to get a table.
We only left the restaurant when they asked us at closing time (21:30) as we started a conversation with some nice older ladies on a trip. Always great to meet new people. We headed to the Lounge bar on the 6th floor (blue) where they play live music. No piano this time, but acoustic guitar. At 22:30 the guy stops playing, but no need to go to sleep, you can continue in the Show bar where 2 youngsters (Sparkling due) were live performing. Don’t want to be too critical here, but they need a little more practising 🙂
Day 10: Hull – Zeebrugge
We arrived on time in Zeebrugge. This time we did not pick the breakfast, as we would be home about 30 minutes later, so we took a coffee and a pastry in the coffee bar. This was about 8£ which was a cheaper option than the 11£ per person breakfast buffet.
Trip information
6 Lessons learnt about roadtripping in Scotland
Lesson 1: Isle of Arran: We would not take the return ferry towards and from Lochranza. In stead we would go from Glasgow towards Ardrossan and take the ferry to Brodick to leave the Isle of Arran via Lochranzo heading to Claonaig. We took the return tip on advice of a friend as it’s cheaper, but as we had to cover quite some distance over the same roads, we would not do it like this in future.
Lesson 2: When you want to attend a guided tour in a distillery of choice at the moment of choice, book it in advance. As this conflicted with our road trip philosophy, you have to accept it will most likely fail and you will need to select another one. But good thing was that we ended up in Wolfburn distillery which was also nice.
Lesson 3: Scotland is getting more popular and crowded every year. Plenty of people advised us to book in advance, but as this is again not in line with our road trip philosophy, we did not book any place to sleep in advance. Due to this we had to be flexible and lucky. Around Glencoe and Fort William, there was nothing free according to hotels.com, booking.com and AirBnb at the time of 18:00 except a 400£ room. When we were thinking of where to put our tent, we decided to scan a last time booking.com and some small B&B had a cancelled room which came available. Like that we booked our room at 18:30 in the evening, probably the last room in the wide area of Glencoe.
Lesson 4: If you need a ferry for a popular connection at the time you want it, book it in advance. When we wanted to book the ferry to Isle of Skye, nothing was free for the next morning. However, this might have been linked to some kind of disruption as well. Not sure about hat. It lead to not visiting Skye, but hey, that comes with roadtripping.
Lesson 5: Make sure you have a timetable for the ferries and align to them if you don’t want to be stuck waiting on the parking lot for the next ferry. It easily takes 30 to 60 minutes depending on the connection.
Lesson 6: Make sure to fuel up whenever you have the chance. Depending of the region it can really take a long time before you can refill you gas tank.
Transport options (from Belgium perspective)
- Overnight ferry with cabin and own car
- Dover – Calais and 10 hour drive
- Flight and rental car
When thinking about our road trip we saw 3 options to make it happen. Although it was by far the cheapest option, we eliminated the Dover – Calais and a 10 hour drive quite quickly as we wanted to spend as much time as possible in Scotland. The other 2 options were quite similar on a budget point of view, but we selected the overnight ferry for the experience and the freedom of having our own car and no lugage weight limitation. We were thinking for example to spend 1 night in our tent, as you can camp anywhere in Scotland, but didn’t want to put sleeping bag, matress, tent, … in our flight lugage for only 1 night.
When looking back at it, the ferry is very convenient. We left on Friday evening straight after work, had an aperitief drink, dinner, good sleep and arrived next morning in Hull at 09:00. Very convenient according to us. The price for 2 passengers and our car was approximatly 450 euro both ways. An other option would have been Ijmuiden – Newcastle but then we had a longer drive from our home towards Ijmuiden and we would have to take extra day of holiday. Now we could leave straight after work. The 2h20 it takes from Hull to NewCastle is similar with the time from our home to Ijmuiden. It would thus not have been a real time saver.
The price for return Zeebrugge – Hull included the cheapest inside cabin with a bunk bed for 2 and toilet and shower. According to us, it was the right choise. We hang in the bar till 23:00 and got up at 07:00. The window would have brought no added value. Of course the bunk beds might not be the desired option for everyone.
