My wife and I are driving from Inverness to Edinburgh in September to see some of the Scottish countryside. We plan to take the overnight train from London to Inverness and pick up a rental car there. Then we have a full day, an overnight, and part of the next day to get to Edinburgh.

1. What route would you advise? Best scenery and a nice fun place to stay overnight. Places to visit on the way? I figured wse'd stop in Sterling but other than that, I'm not sure.

2. We could possibly spend 2 nights on the drive and 2 full days, arriving in Edinburgh lunchtime the 3rd day. Would this allow us to see somewhere special that the shorter drive time would not? Recommendations??

THANK YOU!!!!

I'm not sure how you spend two full days on the drive -- it's not that long. Mappy says it's 3.5 hours and in reality, that seems high because it's just 250 km (less than 150 miles, if you're American) and most of it is the Scottish equivalent of an expressway ("dual carriageway&quot. Just drive down the A9 to the M90 and you go over the Forth Road Bridge into Edinburgh. My wife and I did the drive in reverse, left Edinburgh after 10 am, lunched in Pitlochry, sought souvenirs, and visited Blair Castle and STILL reached our B&B a few miles outside Inverness by 5 pm or so.

What do you really want to see? The "countryside" could be viewed as you drive down the A9 and you can take pictures of the haystacks.

You might as well just drive to Stirling or Perth, take two nights there and explore the surrounding areas, then pop into Edinburgh. Make sure you go to Scone Palace and Stirling Castle. Too much history to miss.

BigRuss: of course one can drive straight down the A9 - but I don't think the OP means it takes 2 days to drive from Inverness to Edinburgh. These 2 days is ALL the free time they have for seeing Scottish countryside before hitting Edinburgh. They are only staying a total of 3 nights/4 days in Scotland so I definitely would not spend 2 nights (or even one night) in Stirling.

JeffRome: If it were me I'd spend the night somewhere around Dunkeld. You could see BlairAtholl/Castle, Loch Tay/Loch Earn, amazing scenery.

Then the next day you could drive around the Trossachs a bit, visit Stirling Castle and either Doune Castle (if you want to see more castles) or the Falkirk Wheel before turing in the car at EDI.

I agree with Janis. A few years ago, we spent 3 nights in Dunkeld and the countryside around that area is beautiful.

Loch Tay, Kenmore, Aberfeldy -- so much to see.

The drive is part of our trip--we don not mean to do it in the shortest time possible. Thought we would do some visiting on the way. Any other thoughts?

We didn't have an overnight stay between Inverness and Edinburgh, but we took an alternate route (to the A9), going through Tomintoul over to Balmoral, then took the A93 over to Blairgowrie before cutting over to Glamis. With an overnight stay, one could see Balmoral and other site along the way (like the Glenlivet distillery, only a short detour off our route prior to Balmoral, and one could also add Scone Palace). It just sort of depends on what you want to see. If you're going to see Edinburgh Castle, I'd skip Sterling. Sterling may be more historically significant, but as a tourist site, it's not quite the bang for the buck that Edinburgh Castle is, and the two are fairly similar.

Sorry to be picky, but if you look it up, you'd need to spell it "Stirling" Castle.