Staying in the Highlands
 

Only 10 days out from our big trip to Paris- Zurich- Scotland- London. The pressure is on to finalize a few last details.
We are flying into Edinburgh late on March 20th. Accommodation prices seem quite high for that weekend ( maybe something on in the city?) so we are thinking of staying by the airport then renting a car to go north the next day & visiting Edinburgh on the way back.
We have 5 days to spend in the Highlands. If we rent a cottage in Fort William will we be able to comfortably day trip to Inverness etc or should we be looking elsewhere.

hello kwaussie

well, it's doable to do inverness as a day trip from ft william but fairly long (3 hrs roundtrip.) you'll have to be more specific about the 'etc'.

A cottage near Ft William will let you visit places from Inverness to Skye, to Glencoe to Oban to Mull to the Trossachs, so a good base. But Ft William and Inverness themselves are not that great. The areas <i>around</i> both towns have lots to see/do, the towns themselves not so much.

Thanks Sue & Janis
I'm a Diana Gabaldon fan so keen to visit Culloden and see some standing stones.
Also thinking we could do a day trip to Skye - over on the ferry, back via the bridge.
Apart from that we don't have any must dos, just want to see a glimpse of as much as possible so that the next time we go we'll know where we want to concentrate our time.

Or would we be better to try a round trip of Scotland, staying in different spots each night & save our cottage based stay for somewhere central England on the way back down to London ( we have 6 days for that leg).

So many decisions!

I've done lots of both -- staying a week at a time in various places, and road trips where I move ever 2 or 3 days (avoid one night stands where ever possible). Most of my trips are a combination of the two. Weekly stays separated by short breaks in between.

Both work fine and each have pros/cons. But the 5-7 nights stays actually leave you more time seeing/doing and less time checking in/checking out/checking in again. A series of circular day trips out of the Ft William area could lets you sample an awful lot of the region. Plus there is the advantage of a cottage over a B&B having a kitchen for quick breakfasts or late night snacks, and a washer dryer.