Edinburgh and the Highlands

You arrive in Edinburgh and settle into the New Town, where the Georgian streets are quieter than the Old Town and the best hotels are found. The afternoon is entirely yours. You might stroll the length of Princes Street Gardens with the castle above you, and keep the first evening gentle: dinner at Café St Honoré, a French bistro in a lane off Thistle Street that has been doing things properly since 1987. We recommend the black pudding fritter.

Edinburgh Castle comes first, on a timed ticket booked before you travel, because once the online allocation is gone there is no fallback at the gate. Then the closes: the two hundred or so narrow passages off the Royal Mile are where the Old Town is still itself, and one street back from the Mile the quality of everything doubles. In the evening, the tram carries you to the stop called The Shore for dinner in Leith, the working port that has quietly become the best place to eat in Scotland. The Kitchin has held its star since 2007.

This is a slower day, beginning with Charlotte Square and the National Gallery on the Mound, then continuing down the hill to Stockbridge, a village inside the city with a Sunday market and the Water of Leith walkway. Circus Lane is the cobbled mews everyone photographs, and it is best seen in the morning. Should you wish for a day out, Stirling Castle is an hour away by train and the best of the great castles to walk. Dinner is in Stockbridge at AVERY, a small starred room with a Scottish larder.

The line climbs to Drumochter, at 1,484 feet the highest point on Britain's main line railway, then crosses a second summit at Slochd before descending to the Moray Firth. Inverness is small, and that is precisely the point, for it is the door to the Highlands. On the first evening, walk the Ness Islands, a chain of wooded islands joined by white Victorian footbridges, and end the night at Hootananny, where there is live music every night of the year.

Culloden is best visited before the visitor center opens. The battlefield is open at any hour and free to enter, and at eight in the morning, in the rain, it becomes something other than a heritage site. Clava Cairns, four thousand years older, is about a mile to the east. From there, the day turns north onto the Black Isle to Chanonry Point, where bottlenose dolphins hunt salmon in the narrows a few yards from the shingle. The rising tide is the time to go, from about an hour after low water, and at any other time it is not worth the journey. A private driver makes this day effortless. Dinner is at Rocpool, back on the river.

The train runs along the Beauly Firth, turns west at Dingwall, and spends two hours crossing the country: moor and loch, deer on the hillsides, Ben Wyvis standing alone to the north, and then the Torridon peaks appearing to the west. Loch Carron opens up near Stromeferry, one of thirteen views VisitScotland calls iconic and the only one in the Highlands reached by train. Plockton is a planned herring village from 1801 on a sheltered bay, with palm trees in its gardens because the Gulf Stream comes in here. Calum's seal trip from the pontoon is well worth taking, and should no seals appear, the trip is free.

A short run back along the line brings you to Strathcarron, where a transfer arranged by the hotel carries you to The Torridon, a Victorian shooting lodge on the loch beneath some of the oldest rock in Europe. The estate is free to walk, and the hotel will gladly take you up a hill should you wish for one. Dinner is at 1887, the hotel's restaurant, which earned a Michelin star in February 2026 under Danny Young. The tasting menu is the reason to be here, and it should be reserved together with the room.

The Kyle Line carries you back east to Inverness, with the whole crossing seen again in the other direction. From Inverness, the Caledonian Sleeper departs in the evening six nights a week, Sunday to Friday, and brings you into London before eight the next morning. We recommend a Club room or better, because the Club Car takes no reservations. Alternatively, Inverness Airport has its own station, eleven minutes from the center.