2 minute summary Best time to go Walking Rail tours Cruising the lochs Wildlife Cairngorms

Scottish Highlands travel guide

Our Scottish Highlands travel guide explores some of Europe’s most soul-stirring landscapes. Get even a short distance away from the road and you’ll find yourself amid pristine natural scenery. Learn where to go in the Scottish Highlands for wildlife watching, winter walks and whisky tasting, and why the best holidays are those that deliberately slow you down.

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Scottish Highlands travel guide

There’s an incredible sense of space in the Scottish Highlands, whether you’re cruising across a misty loch, pausing for breath on a snowy Cairngorms hike, or stopped at a deserted railway platform in the middle of nowhere. Here are landscapes being gradually and ambitiously rewilded, ensuring predators such as pine martens maintain their vital place in the ecosystem. Here are dolphins and whales, eagles and wild cats, puffins and seals. Here are iconic rail journeys, mountain guides swapping stories and jokes around the table with their charges, and cruises taking you past crumbling castles.

Explore the Highlands by rail, by boat, on foot – but get even a short distance from the road and you can feel completely alone.

If you take just one thing away from this travel guide, let it be this: leave the car at home. “I think if 2020 taught us anything, it’s the joy of being outside,” says Robert Kidd, from our Scotland rail holidays partner McKinlay Kidd. “Even if the weather is grey, getting out there is so positive for mental health. You come to the Scottish Highlands and once you get off the road, you’re in the middle of all this fantastic raw nature in no time.”

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The Scottish Highlands is…

best explored by rail, by boat or on foot. Escape the car and enjoy.

The Scottish Highlands isn’t…

to be rushed, but savoured slowly, like a good whisky.

Things to do in the Scottish Highlands

The best way to explore this region is by getting beyond the roads. Whether that’s taking a classic rail journey like the West Highland Line and carrying on into the wildlife haven of the Hebrides, hiking the majestic Cairngorms with a knowledgeable mountain guide, tracking pine martens and beavers using night hides and canoes, or cruising the lochs of Argyll on a traditional fishing boat, you’ll have a better time when you leave the car at home. Brexit and the Covid pandemic both hit the Scottish Highlands hard, hollowing out the tourism industry that supported employment in many remote areas. When you go with our responsible travel companies, you’re helping support local businesses. That might mean dining on meat supplied by a local butcher after a walk in the Cairngorms. It might mean using a local taxi driver to explore Skye after arriving by ferry. It could mean hiring a skipper to follow whales and dolphins in the Irish Sea. It always means your money stays longer and goes further in the local economy. Watch the skies. Not for little green men, but for raptors. The ambitious Cairngorms Connect program is aiming to restore ancient habitats and natural ecological processes, and as part of that it’s ensuring that birds of prey are safe there. You’ll also find increasing numbers of raptors such as golden eagles, white tailed eagles, buzzards, ospreys and owls in the Hebrides. Another reason to keep looking up in the Scottish Highlands is that, in the winter, it’s possible to see the Northern Lights. Clear nights in areas with low light pollution are your best bet.

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Things not to do in the Scottish Highlands

Exploring the Scottish Highlands should be like savouring an excellent glass of whisky. It would be a mistake to rush them. Walking holidays give you plenty of opportunities to stop and drink in the fresh air and views, and while cruising the lochs you can’t help but embrace a slower pace of life. Tailor made rail holidays let you shape the experiences according to your own preferences: adding a night here, a walk there, a tour of a historic castle there. You don’t need a car to enjoy a stay in the Hebrides or Orkney, so don’t assume that your holiday has to stop at the coast. Rail tours of the Scottish Highlands on the West Highland Line will frequently get the ferry over to Skye from Mallaig, while if you’re on the Far North Line you can take a short voyage over to Orkney from John O’ Groats. Your travel company will ensure you stay in the right place so that you can get around easily by public transport, or they’ll arrange for a friendly taxi driver to be at your disposal. The beavers are back. The raptors are flourishing. There’s talk of lynx making a return and there have been rumblings about wolf reintroductions in the Cairngorms for years now. But one beastie that almost no-one has any time for is the midge. Don’t forget your natural bug repellent because they’re a menace in summer, especially around dawn and in the evenings. However, they’re much less common at higher elevations, so head to the Cairngorms for hopefully bug-free walking. And if you’re cruising, you shouldn’t be too bothered either, as they don’t have the range to get too far from land.