I will be traveling with my adult brother and parents to Scotland in June. We'll spend a couple of nights in Edinburgh and then go up into the Highlands for 4 nights. One of the main purposes of this trip is to visit the area that our ancestors from and visit a museum with our family's history. The museum is in Bettyhill. I am looking for a good little town to base ourselves and do trips somewhere around Bettyhill in the far north. Any suggestions? We will come back down to Inverness for one final night before flying to London.

I've always wanted to get that far north into the Highlands but haven't been any further north than Tain, so I won't be much help.

There are some backpackers with a YouTube channel called Going the Whole Hogg that frequent that far north....there may be some tips or hints on their website? Or they might answer an email?

Enjoy! I love Scotland so much - it's beautiful and the people are just the nicest

We stayed at Ackergill Castle just north of Wick. Very cool place and just a little over 50 miles from Bettyhill.

Thanks everyone. We ended up booking a cottage in Tongue. We'll play it by ear and explore up and down the coast a bit for a few days.

If anyone has hotel recommendations for Edinburgh that would be great. Trying not to break the bank. All the Airbnb's I looked at had insane prices. A simple hotel will do.

Stay near the Royal Mile. This will be walking distance to the grass market, castle, and holyrood.

Eat at Oink! Near the grass market.

Take the train to Sterling and do the castle and Wallace monument. (Easy day trip back to Edinburgh).

That high up in the highlands is pretty desolate, for good reason. Maybe spend some time in Inverness or make your way down the west coast to Oban or Skye.

Avoid Glasgow .

We always stay at Frasier suites. You cannot beat the location. We always are in the shoulder season and the lack of AC in most rooms is not a problem. make sure you get a room overlooking St. Giles street and not the side opposite High Street since there is a stairway down to Market street that gets used at all hours of the night.

Make sure to check out the Thistle chapel in St Giles Cathedral.

Dunrobin Castle and Falls of Shin are worth a stop on your drive to Tongue.

We spent 2 weeks in Scotland this summer and visited my ancestor's castle as well. It is on the west coast about an hour from Glasgow. Didn't go that far north of Inverness but I do have Edinburgh recs.

As stated earlier, stay close to the Royal Mile. We didn't enjoy the Royal Mile that much as it is mostly shopping, but I will say, if you see something you like buy it. We thought that we'd see the same stuff all over Scotland and were terribly incorrect. My wife spent a small fortune. I came home with a deck of cards!

We stayed at the Double Tree on Bread St and was a quick walk to Edinburgh Castle, Royal Mile, Calton Hill, and Arthur's seat. We ate at Piper's Rest in Hunter square and they had some good food and great drinks. Don't forget to drink Irn Bru. We drank one per day, easy, and we don't drink many soft drinks. We bought the "zero" version and it was great.

Probably the best part of Edinburgh was the climb up Arthur's seat. It was a bit of a hike but was well worth it to finally make it to the top.

We drove up to Sterling on Day 3 and then stayed the night in Pitlochry. Nice little town with a lot of tourist traps but some good distilleries nearby. From there we drove to Inverness and spent 2 nights there exploring Loch Ness and the area around Urqhuart Castle. Got to Hootenanny's if you have time in Inverness, especially if they have a live band. Good atmosphere and a nice little place. You'll need to book a reservation a few days in advance at least on the weekend. We ate at River House in Inverness and it was pretty good.

I can give you a run-down of the remainder of the trip if you like but I know you didn't ask for that. Let me know if you need any ideas or if you decide to stay and do other things.

Have you considered going north first and then hitting Edinburgh at the end of your trip? I ask because we wasted 3 days of car rental in Edinburgh and probably should have visited there last and saved some money o on the rental.

We had a great time and really needed to spend about 5 more days there. We would love to go back some time to "finish" our trip. I would love to go further north the next time. Have fun!

Yeah, we rented at the airport when we arrived and then parked for three days in Edinburgh. It was about 8 miles from the airport to our hotel so we got some good driving practice in. It was stressful. Ideally, though, we maybe should have gone north and ended in Edinburgh because of the 3 days with the car parked. Parking was free because of validation at the hotel but the car was about $200 per day that we didn't use.

Just something we didn't even think of until we were leaving. A little late for that.

Driving is a different experience there and can be challenging but by the end of our trip, I was a pretty good driver. I white-knuckled for a few days, especially in the country with the one-lane roads. Isle of Skye is not to be trifled with but by the time we got there, I was doing pretty well. I think the drive from Fort William, along Loch Lamond, to near Glasgow was the "scariest".

TXCityAggie said:

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Thanks everyone. We ended up booking a cottage in Tongue. We'll play it by ear and explore up and down the coast a bit for a few days.

If anyone has hotel recommendations for Edinburgh that would be great. Trying not to break the bank. All the Airbnb's I looked at had insane prices. A simple hotel will do.

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We used hotel points for our stay in Edinburgh. We also stayed at mostly guest houses. Should have tried the Air BnB route but the guest houses were inexpensive and the hosts were great.

My wife and I just hiked from Glasgow (Milgalve technically) to Fort William in September on the West Highland Way.....beautiful part of the country!

We hiked all over Skye and through Glencoe doing short 2-6 hour hikes. It was great but like I said, we missed everything north of Inverness. We almost went that route to Skye but ended up staying on the main road. We didn't overnight anywhere hiking we just stayed in local towns and did easier stuff.

Have you done Ben Nevis? We talked about it but I didn't think we had the proper gear. We talked to some people in a pub that hiked it the day before and they said it wasn't too bad and they aren't experienced hikers or climbers. I think it took them about 8 hours up and back.

I started to do an online course in Gaelic while we were there just for fun but gave it up when we got back. I need to start over and learn something.

No, we skipped Ben Nevis on this go round. It would have been day 7 for us and we were just about ready to be in town in a real bed.

You have to watch the weather pretty closely because a lot of the time you get socked in and don't have any views.

We're definitely going to do the hike again at some point, and will probably change it up - maybe start in Tyndrum and just do the second half of it again....if we do that, we'll probably do Ben Nevis