In the summer of 2024, we took a trip to Scotland with our two children, ages six and three. After a longer than expected journey getting there, and two nights in Edinburgh, we rented a car and took a road trip through the Highlands.

Itinerary

We mostly based our itinerary on what Rick Steves recommends here, with some modifications for what we thought would be most interesting for our family. Along the way, we almost exclusively stayed in hostels run by Hostelling Scotland, which were nice, affordable options for our family of four. We also found it easy to work with them to book all of our stops ahead of time.

• Day 1: Pick up car and drive to Stirling. Visit Stirling Castle. Drive to Oban and spend two nights there.
• Day 2: Sightseeing in Oban. If the weather cooperates, consider a trip to the islands of Mull and Iona.
• Day 3: Drive from Oban to Glencoe. Explore the scenic valley and do some hiking. Drive on to Glenfinnan and visit the monument (and maybe see the steam train on the viaduct). Spend the night in Arisaig (to be near the ferry port of Mallaig).
• Day 4: Catch a ferry from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. Drive to Portree, then around the Trotternish peninsula, stopping at scenic spots along the way. Spend the night on the island in Broadford.
• Day 5: Drive off the Isle of Skye on the Skye Bridge, headed towards Inverness. Stop at Loch Ness attractions including Urquhart Castle. Arrive in Inverness. Spend two nights there.
• Day 6: Explore Inverness and the surrounding area, including Culloden Battlefield.
• Day 7: Leave Inverness. Head first to Nairn and play on the beach. Drive south to Newtonmore and visit the Highland Folk Museum. Spend the night in Perth.
• Day 8: Drive from Perth to Edinburgh in the morning, leaving enough time to explore the city in the afternoon.

As we mentioned in previous posts, this was not exactly the original plan. We had originally planned on spending three nights in Inverness, and then on Day 8 we would have driven from Inverness all the way to Edinburgh (stopping in Newtonmore), only arriving in the afternoon/evening. Since we wanted to have more time in Edinburgh, we asked Hostelling Scotland if we could shift that last night. They didn’t have space in Edinburgh for an extra night there, but they did have a room at the hostel in Perth. Perth is only an hour away from Edinburgh, so that was our best option for spending most of the day in Edinburgh.

Driving in Scotland

We rented our car from Budget, using the location that ended up being walking distance from our Edinburgh Airbnb. We were happy to see that it was the same price (and maybe a little bit cheaper) to rent in town versus having to return to the airport.

One thing to note for travelers from the US like us is that the car selections are generally smaller than in the US. You don’t find many options for large SUVs like you might be used to! We chose a Compact SUV which we thought would be fine for our family of four (and hopefully big enough in the back for the younger kid’s car seat), plus maybe a little more able to handle any rugged roads we went on. We ended up being assigned a Nissan Juke. It felt a bit more “compact” than “SUV,” but it worked fine for what we needed.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed in one of the pictures above that the car had a manual transmission. That is another thing that travelers from the US may need to be aware of: in many cases it is easier and cheaper to get manual transmission instead of automatic. Fortunately for us, Della learned to drive a manual transmission growing up and still remembers well enough to feel confident enough to do it on this trip. Another thing to consider is that in Scotland the driver sits on the right side of the car, so they have to shift with their left hand. We did have some experience driving this way on our self-drive safari so we were pretty confident we could figure it out. Unfortunately, the UK is a little more restrictive than the US in terms of allowing multiple drivers of the car. We could have added Eric as a secondary driver, but it would have added a lot to the cost, so Della said she would do all the driving.

One big decision we had to make as traveling parents was what to do about seating for the kids. Back in the US, we hadn’t felt like our six-year old was big enough to ride in a booster, so he was still in a big car seat (and obviously the three-year old was as well). You can rent car seats from the car rental company or from local services, but the cost for eight days felt like enough to buy a brand-new nice seat! We didn’t want to bring our big seats from home, so we thought about bringing along some lightweight seats we have. Still, that wasn’t a great fit because we knew at the end of the trip we would be using the London Underground and we didn’t want to lug two seats around on that no matter how lightweight they were. Finally, we came up with a hybrid plan:

• For the three-year old, we would bring a lightweight car seat that was very close to reaching its expiration date, so at the end of the road trip we could just dispose of it in Edinburgh and not have to have it in London
• For the six-year old, we decided to purchase the RideSafer Travel Vest, a small harness that allows the child to be securely strapped into a regular seat. This packs down very compactly, so we thought it would be great for this trip and future ones as well

Yet another thing for drivers from the US to consider about driving in Scotland is that the highways may be much more narrow than you are used to, especially if you live in the western US like us and are used to wide-open spaces. Scotland does have some roads that are as big as interstates, but many of what were listed as highways were much smaller two-lane roads that we were used to. They also had in many places narrow shoulders with not much room for error, tight and blind curves, and large trucks coming from the opposite direction. Yet they still had a speed limit of 60 MPH! Not to mention the fact that we were driving on the opposite side of the road that we were used to, so we missed the intrinsic feel of where to put ourselves in our lane. All that probably combined to make the locals frustrated at us not feeling comfortable driving as fast as we could be.

If you are planning to go to the Isle of Skye or another smaller location, you need to familiarize yourself with the rules for single-track roads. These are roads where there is only one paved line which is expected to be used by drivers going both directions! You should study how to use the marked “passing places” to yield to drivers coming from the other direction, and what the rules are for which driver yields. We saw someone (almost certainly a tourist) ignore these rules on Skye and cause a huge mess for everyone else, so they are definitely important to understand.

One final thing to think about is what you want to listen to! We thought it would be fun to put together a playlist of songs from Scotland to match the beautiful scenery we were seeing – including plenty of songs from the Outlander tv show!

We hope this overview post helped to set the scene for our Scottish Highlands road trip! Next up, we will describe the different stops along the way in more detail.