Highlands & Islands

2601 | 16 to 24 April | 9 days | maximum number 10

Inverewe, Dunvegan Castle, Attadale, Inveraray Castle, Benmore Botanic, Armadale Castle, Kilmartin Museum, Eilean Donan Castle, the Glenelg Brochs, Arduaine, Crarae, Achamore House and a boat trip on the Sgarbh

Welcome to Scotland’s stunning west coast…

This nine-day odyssey explores Scotland’s stunning west coast and its ever-changing landscapes and seascapes, from Ross-shire in the north to Argyll in the south.

We visit a wide range of glorious gardens, from the internationally renowned to the less well-known, learn something of the Highland’s rich history and heritage, and touch upon its art and culture. All this, combined with the warmth of traditional Scottish hospitality, comfortable hotels and some of the freshest, most delicious seafood ever!

We’ve been running this tour since 2007. We love the West Coast, and we hope you will too!

Main image: Crinan Basin & Sea Locks, adjacent to the Crinan Hotel April 24

Prices

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0,000 GBP | 0,000 USD | 0.000 EUR

Prices are per person, sharing a double or twin room

Per person, single occupancy

0,000 GBP | 0,000 USD | 0.000 EUR

Prices are per person, for the single occupancy of one room

Prices, reservations & payments

Please read the Booking & Paying page and the comments in the additional information, below.

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Itinerary

Scroll down for maps of the tour area, hotel information, eating etc.

D0 Wednesday, 15 April – joining the tour at Ashtree House

Please join the tour at Ashtree House Hotel at any time of the day, today, Wednesday, 15 April.

Your accommodation this evening is included in the price of the tour, but dinner is not. Please let us know if you would like to arrive earlier than Wednesday, 15 May, or if you are staying elsewhere and will join us on the morning of Thursday, 16 May – in which case please be at Ashtree House no later than 08.00.

Ashtree House is a 15-room independent, family-run establishment in central Paisley, some ten minutes by taxi from Glasgow International Airport, and Paisley is immediately southwest of central Glasgow.

D1 Thursday, 16 April

Mallaig, Armadale & Plockton

We cross the Clyde, leaving Glasgow behind, and drive north to Crianlarich Railway Station, where you board the West Highland Line, for a scenic rail journey across Rannoch Moor, past Ben Nevis and across the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct, to Mallaig, where we are reunited for the ferry to Skye.

Depending upon the tides, we should be on Skye within the hour and enjoying a brief stop at Ragamuffin – stockists of good quality British and Irish knitwear – before visiting Armadale Castle, part of the Clan Donald estate, and its superb award-winning Museum of the Isles. The ruined castle, with its well-planted spring gardens and stunning views back to the mainland, to say nothing of its excellent café, makes for a pleasant visit and an enjoyable afternoon.

It's an hour's drive north from Armadale to Plockton – returning to the mainland by the Skye bridge – where we'll arrive at the Plockton Inn in good time to settle in before drinks and dinner at the Inn.

Today's driving is about 185 miles/300 km

D2 Friday, 17 April

Dunvegan & Skye

We have the whole day on the Isle of Skye, perhaps Scotland’s most famous island, starting with a scenic drive to Dunvegan Castle, the 800-year-old ancestral home of Clan MacLeod, where we have lunch and plenty of time to explore this ancient and still-lived-in castle and all its other treasures.

Time too, to enjoy Dunvegan's ever-improving garden, a garden laid out in the 18th century, but with a much chequered history, including being completely swept away! Recently, it has undergone considerable remodelling and replanting and is looking all the better for it.

We continue north, stopping to take photos of Skye’s spectacular scenery and to glimpse what life might have been like 100 years ago at the Syke Museum of Island Life.

We’ll stop again, in Portree, the island’s capital, before dinner further along the coast at the Hebridean Inn.

Today's driving is about 125 miles/200 km

D3 Saturday, 18 April

Inverewe & Applecross

This morning we head north, driving along Glen Carron and Loch Maree to visit Inverewe Gardens. This world-famous garden, created by Osgood Mackenzie in 1862, is one of Scotland's most popular and is home to the most northerly planting of the rare Wollemi pine. It is home, too, to more than 2,500 species of other exotic plants, protected by a shelterbelt and flourishing in the warm currents of the Gulf Stream.

Loch Ewe was the chief anchorage for the Arctic Convoys to Russia during WW2, later becoming an important NATO anchorage during the Cold War and, if time permits, we may visit the nearby RAC Museum.

We return home via the remote Applecross Peninsula, dining at the highly-acclaimed Applecross Walled Garden restaurant, before returning to Plockton over Britain's highest public road, hopefully in time to capture the sunset over Skye and the Outer Hebrides beyond.

Today's driving is about 175 miles/280 km

D4 Sunday, 19 April

Brochs, Castles & Attadale

We return to Skye, to cross Kyle Rhea – the straits between Skye and the mainland at its narrowest point, where cattle drovers traditionally swim their cattle to market – on the Glenelg Ferry, Scotland’s last remaining turntable ferry, to visit Dun Telve & Dun Troddan, two of Scotland's best-preserved Iron Age Brochs.

After coffee, at Glenelg Inn, close to where Gavin Maxwell’s set Ring of Bright Water, we set off past views of the Five Sisters of Kintail, to Eilean Donan Castle, one of Scotland's most iconic castles, for lunch and a tour of the castle. Perched on an island, at the point where three great sea lochs meet, the site has been inhabited since the 6th century and fortified since the 13th.

After lunch, we drive to the shores of Loch Carron, for a private visit to Attadale, the stunning gardens of the late Nicky Macpherson, an artist and gardener. The gardens were created by Baron Schroder in the late 19th century, though the garden you see today is very much the work of Nicky. Joanna, Nicky's daughter, has taken over the running of Attadale and will guide us around this wonderful garden before we return to Plockton for dinner and some traditional music at the Inn.

Today's driving is about 75 miles/120 km

D5 Monday, 20 April

Fort William, Arduaine & Crinan

An early start through stunning scenery takes us to Fort William, for coffee and a walk around this famous Highland town. Named for one of the three forts – William, Augustus & George – George II's three sons and built to suppress the Jacobites after the 1715 and later uprisings.

Fort William is about halfway to Arduaine, the famous gardens created by James Campbell on a windswept, seaside hillside. Not the ideal site for a garden, but he was not deterred when, according to his journal, he "turned the first sod" in August 1895, creating a garden which, when he died in 1929, contained some 220 rhododendrons. We have lunch at Arduaine and plenty of time to enjoy the abundance of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and magnolias.

Continuing south, we’ll stop briefly in Kilmartin Glen, one of Europe's most important concentrations of Neolithic and Bronze Age remains and, if time allows, we will visit one or two of the cairns and standing stones, arriving at the Crinan Hotel, in plenty of time to check-in, relax and enjoy drinks and dinner in the Seafood Bar.

Today's driving is about 160 miles/260 km

D6 Tuesday, 21 April – a day afloat

One of the great highlights of this tour is our annual boat trip aboard the Sgarbh, on some of the finest cruising waters on the west coast of Scotland! Skippered by Ross Ryan, son of the hotel owners, the Sgarbh (Gaelic for cormorant) is a fully restored 1947 Clyde-built herring boat, fitted out in 1953 for cruising. Completely original and the last of her type, she is over 20 tons, 40-foot long, beautiful, solid and safe!

We will make the best of the prevailing conditions and, if it is particularly fine, we will take a picnic lunch with us, but whatever we do, it will be fun and interesting, and we will be surrounded by stunning scenery until we return for dinner at Crinan.

D7 Wednesday, 22 April

Gigha & Achamore Gardens

We spend the day on the Kintyre peninsula, starting with a drive to Tayinloan for the 20-minute ferry crossing to the Isle of Gigha to visit Achamore Gardens, Gigha's jewel-in-the-crown. Created by Colonel Sir James Horlick in 1944, with his inheritance from the family-owned hot-drinks company, and with the assistance of Kitty Lloyd Jones, Achamore Gardens is the home of Horlick’s renowned Rhododendron and Camellia collection. The gardens flourish in Gigha's microclimate, it is home to several champion trees and hosts unusual plants and trees from around the world, including the Wollemi Pine.

It has become something of a tradition to take a picnic to Gigha, which we will continue to do, and return to the mainland on the early afternoon ferry to visit the gardens of the Lithgow family at their home, Ormsary House. The gardens are resplendent with bluebells in spring and the woodland gardens are ablaze with azaleas and rhododendrons. A walled garden, which has evolved over a couple of centuries, is on two levels, with a kitchen garden producing plants, fruit and vegetables for the house on the upper level, and a magnificent Secret Garden, with roses, magnolias and a long border on the lower level.

Ormsary is just along the road from Kilberry, where we have dinner at the wonderful Kilberry Inn.

Today's driving is about 100 miles/160 km

D8 Thursday, 23 April

Inveraray Castle & Crarae

Our penultimate day starts with a drive along Loch Fyne to visit Inveraray Castle, home of the Dukes of Argyll and Chiefs of Clan Campbell. The castle was inspired by a sketch by Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace’s architect, and was built in the 1700s, replacing a series of castles dating to the 15th century. The gardens cover sixteen acres, of which around two acres are formal lawns and flowerbeds, themselves outstanding in the spring, the remainder being park and woodland.

We have plenty of time to explore the house and its gardens and enjoy lunch before we take a stroll around the town of Inveraray.

Returning along Loch Fyne, we stop for a late afternoon visit to Crarae, one of the finest woodland gardens on the west coast. It is a spectacular 50-acre garden in a dramatic setting with a wonderful collection of spring-flowering shrubs planted along the course of the Crarae Burn as it tumbles through a rocky gorge in a series of cascades. Since acquiring the garden in 2001, the National Trust for Scotland has restored the infrastructure of the garden, replacing bridges, steps and paths.

We are not far from Crinan, where we return for our end-of-tour dinner.

Today's driving is about 60 miles/100 km

D9 Friday, 24 April

Kelmscott & Buscot

We cross Loch Fyne, from Tarbert to the Cowal Peninsula, to visit Benmore Botanic Garden, one of three outstations of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Once part of the hunting grounds of the Dukes of Argyll, Benmore changed hands between wealthy Victorian men until 1889 when Henry Younger, a wealthy Edinburgh brewer, bought the estate. He made many improvements and introduced exotic shrubs and trees to the woodland garden. In 1942 his son gifted the estate to the nation, with the RBGE taking on part of the garden to house a large collection of plants, brought from China by George Forrest. The garden has many magnificent trees, not least an imposing avenue of Giant Sequoias, a fine collection of plants from Bhutan and a beautifully restored Victorian Fernery.

After lunch we take a second ferry, across the Clyde, dropping off at Glasgow Airport and Ashtree House Hotel, where the tour ends and where we plan to be by late afternoon.

If you are staying in the UK and don't need, or wish, to return to Glasgow, then please let us know your onward travel plans, so that we may assist you in getting to your next destination.

Today's total driving is about 90 miles/145 km

The Highland Clearances

The Highland Clearances were the forced evictions of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands in two phases from 1750 to 1860.

The first phase resulted from agricultural improvement and involved the enclosure of the open fields managed on the run rig system and shared grazing. The second phase involved overcrowded crofting communities from the first phase and this is when assisted passages became common. Some evictions were brutal. Read more here (easy reading) or here (more considered).

Crofts and Crofting

Crofting is a system of landholding, unique to Scotland, and is an integral part of life in the Highlands & Islands.

There are around 20,000 crofts and more than 750,000 ha of land in crofting tenure, with approximately 33,000 people living in crofting households. A croft is a relatively small agricultural holding, normally held in tenancy, and which may or may not have buildings or a house associated with it. Crofts range in size from less than 0.5 hectares to more than 50 hectares, but an average croft is nearer 5 hectares.

Tour area map

Our hotels and eateries

We spend our first night close to Glasgow International Airport at Ashtree House Hotel and the next four nights in Plockton, at the Plockton Inn, a family-run inn which we have enjoyed returning to each year, ever since our first Highlands & Islands tour in 2007.

We spend the final four nights of the tour the Crinan Hotel. Run by the owner, the artist Frances Ryan, the hotel is at the western end of the Crinan Canal, overlooking the Sound of Jura. It is another venerable institution to which we return annually.

Both the Plockton Inn and the Crinan Hotel have superb kitchens. We dine in twice in Plockton and on three evenings at Crinan, dining out on three evenings, firstly, on the remote Applecross Peninsula at the Applecross Walled Garden, looking out to the Isle of Skye and the Outer Hebrides beyond, secondly, on the Isle of Skye at the Hebridean Inn, and lastly, on the remote western side of the Knapdale peninsula at the award-winning Kilberry Inn.

Gardens

The gardens on the west coast of Scotland flourish, in much the same way as gardens do in Cornwall, because of the effects of the Gulf Stream, which helps keep the west coast of Britain a couple of degrees warmer than the east coast and has a particularly pronounced effect on the climate of the Inner and Outer Hebrides.

We visit a wide range of gardens, from large, well-known gardens like Inverewe Gardens, the National Trust for Scotland's flagship garden, on the same latitude as Gothenburg in Sweden or Sitka in Alaska, to smaller, private gardens, open for charity as a part of Scotland's Gardens (the sister charitable organisation to the National Garden Scheme in England).

We would like to thank and acknowledge Kenneth Cox and his excellent and authoritative work Scotland for Gardeners, a book which we use extensively in planning our Scottish tours.

Other attractions

Besides the magnificent landscapes and coastal seascapes, attractions in their own right, we visit a range of other attractions from the award-winning Museum of the Isles, which highlights the importance of sea communications and tells something of the story of the Highland Clearances and the subsequent mass migrations to North America and elsewhere.

We indulge in our passion for going off the beaten track to show you one or two less-well-visited sites, notably on our excursion to Glenelg, when we cross from Skye on the MV Glenachulish, the last manually operated turntable ferry in Scotland to visit the Glenelg Brochs, two 2,000-year-old fortified Pictish towers.

Bedrooms & upgrades

Generally, we book a hotel’s standard rooms for our groups, although these may vary from room to room within the hotel.

Single travellers
Single travellers will have their own room, typically a small double room or, occasionally, a twin room.

Upgrades
If you would like to upgrade your room, please look at the hotel’s website and then contact us with your request. Do not contact the hotel directly.

Joining instructions

The meeting arrangements are outlined in Day 1 of the itinerary, above, and will be confirmed by email some 12 weeks before the tour starts.

NB. The hotels we use as meeting points are chosen because of their location, the ease of access for the minibus and because they afford our customers, whether staying there or not, a comfortable and secure place to wait.

It is not because we endorse the hotel.

Accuracy & faithfulness

When describing the tour, we try to be accurate and, when undertaking the tour, we try to be faithful to the itinerary. However, changes can occur, either necessarily or unavoidably, and we ask for your understanding when this happens.

Useful links

Click here for some useful links to other websites, notably tourism, heritage, horticultural, cultural organisations and travel and transport websites.

Please let us know if any links are dysfunctional.

Acknowledgements

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the assistance of the many guide books and websites we use in planning our tours.

Thank you.