A friend and I are taking a 12-day trip to Scotland on September 2nd. I've been to England several times but never to Scotland and am looking forward to seeing the land of my heritage (I'm a Grant!). Not wanting to drive on the "wrong" side of the road, we are taking trains while there and have two days with a private car and driver for areas where train travel is inconvenient. My question has to do with booking day tours. We will be in Edinburgh for several days and want to book a day tour to see the sights outside of Edinburgh one day (Stirling Castle and Loch Lomond). We're also staying at Culloden House in Inverness and would like to a day tour of that area as well. We're thinking in terms of a mini-bus tour if possible. Does anyone know of a good company that arranges this type of thing? Also, should we book this before we go or can this be done when we get to Scotland? Thanks.

Both Edinburgh and Inverness have very large/good tourist information centers so you can get the info locally and book tours from them when you are there.

(BTW driving isn't hard - an a lot cheaper than taking tours everywhere)

When I was in Scotland a couple years ago we took a tour from Inverness that visited Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, Glen Affric and other sites with a very informative and entertaining guide. It was an all day tour in an 18 seat bus. It was one of the highlights of our trip. This is the website of the company:

http://www.discoverlochness.com/index.htm

It looks very different from what I remember when we were doing research for our trip (looks like it may be undergoing a site redesign), but the tour details don't appear to have changed.

I can't recommend any as such, but you'll find a lot of options here

http://www.scotland-inverness.co.uk/tourguides.htm

And I second the driving option.

When I discovered I wasn't able to drive as I had originally planned I had to come up with an alternative. Rabbies Trail Burners http://www.rabbies.com/index.asp has several 1, 2, 3 and 5 day tours available. We used them for a 3-day trip to the Isle of Skye and a 1-day trip to St.Andrews. I highly recommend them. No more that 16 people max.