I'm 60 yo female traveling solo to Edinburgh September 8 for 20 days in Scotland. I will spend 3 nights in Edinburgh at the beginning and one night at the end. I have reserved a rental car when I leave Edinburgh to travel around Scotland.

I enjoy easy hiking - not mountain climbing - beautiful drives and scenery, castles, villages, areas that are away from touristy places. I like to stay in one place for 3 or 4 nights - taking day trips. Prefer B&Bs or smaller more intimate accommodations. I fly out of Edinburgh very early on September 28 so need to be back in Edinburgh on the night of 27th.

Hoping for suggestions for an itinerary.
Any help with suggestions for places to stay, things to see and do would be much appreciated.

Thank you,
Mary

Oh - heck you could go anywhere. There are sooooooo many possibilities. Have you and guide books?

You have the 11th to the 26th (16 days) I might consider 2 or 3 days in the Borders, 3 days in Fife, 3 days on Deeside, 3 or 4 days near Inverness, 3 days in the Trossachs (maybe in/near Callander)

The Borders: The abbeys, St Abbs Head, Traquair House, Abbotsford, lots of good walks

Fife: St Andrews, fishing villages, Falkland Palace, Isle of May

Deeside and en route: Glamis Castle, Dunnottar, Crathes castle/Gardens, 'The Castle Trail', Pictish stones

Inverness area: Culloden, Loch Ness, Urquhart, the Black Isle/dolphins, Cawdor, Glen Affric

Trossachs -- LOTS of lochs/waterfalls/terrific walks, Inchmahome, Falls of Dochart, Stirling, Doune

Walk Highlands is your friend. Lots of great walks and hikes, graded by difficulty, with comprehensive route maps downloadable straight onto your phone and good information on transport and parking. The name is a bit of a misnomer as it covers the whole country rather than just the Highlands.

http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/

Thank you! I have not bought a guide book - do you have a recommendation for a good one?

Thank you for the walkhighlands link. It's great.

DK Eyewitness, Fodors - severa. Rick Steve is pretty useless for the UK unfortunately.

Another book to look for is <u>Scotland the Best</u> by Peter Irvine. It doesn't change too much edition to edition so a used one for cheap is as good as a new one. It isn't a guidebook as such -- more a gazetteer of all things Scottish. The best walks, the best pubs, the best views, the best boat trips, the best waterfalls, the best scenic drives, etc etc etc. Just a fabulous resource.

That should say >>DK Eyewitness, Fodors - several<<

Thank you!

We used the Michelin Guide to Scotland for our trip 2 years ago, and I liked it a lot.

We're now planning a trip to Ireland, and I got a National Geographic Traveler Guide, which is one of the best guides I've ever had. This will be my third trip to Ireland, where I have many relatives. We'll mostly be in a very rural part of Northern Ireland which has few tourists and is scantily covered in most travel guides. The National Geographic has detailed descriptions of things to see and do right in the area where we'll be, and it would have been great to have had it on our earlier trips. I just checked, and see that they have a guide to Scotland in the series, and the reviews of Amazon make me think that it's as good as the Ireland guide.

Thanks for all the great info. I have ordered a couple of guide books recommended here.

I also like the small villages around St Andrews, and September is a nice time to go but probably not sunbathing on the beach weather.

Check out the tour company McKinley Kidd. They plan trips to meet your needs. This is not a bus tour company.

We've used them twice, and will definitely travel with them again.

Sorry -- it's McKinlay Kidd -- with an "a".