Unforgettable Loch Ness & Glencoe: Highlands Day Tour

We (a family of four with two teenagers) really enjoyed this tour! Pete was a friendly and knowledgeable guide and, being NZers, we loved the banter! We learnt so much about Scottish history by listening to Pete's stories and music and the Loch Ness cruise is great value, covering both the more recent scientific research and the mystery of the legendry monster. The only suggestion we have is a few more photo stops. We passed lookouts where it would have been nice to grab a quick photo. Five out of five stars!

Paul is wonderful, he took us everywhere and he is knowledgable, whatever you paid is worth it and this is a legit tour. The bus is clean and very comfortable.

Honestly, the best part of my trip to Edinburgh. Martin, our guide, was funny, affable, and truly knowledgeable about history, landmarks, and culture of Scotland. Plenty of breaks if you need them, but not too many you got bored waiting. Bus was clean and comfortable. If he found a particularly pretty turn-off for pictures, he took it to give us a full experience. I’m so glad I took this tour, I learned an extraordinary amount, got some gorgeous pictures, and have a boatload of new memories to take with me. Thanks Martin!

Colin was great. Andy was great, too. We did the highlands tour. We stopped a few times and Colin the driver kept us on schedule.

The trip was really bad. We were on a bus the whole day (approx 9 hours out of the 12 hour day). 5 hours in the morning with a 30 min stop for breakfast and then a 10 minute stop in the highlands- that was the one and only stop we had for highlands. We also had multiple opportunities to stop in beautiful locations and the driver decided to stop in the least picturesque place. The tour is also related to highland cows, even with a highland cow as its mascot - throughout the day we had multiple opportunities to stop and see the cows, clearly our tour group wanted to see them, I even asked to see them directly, and the guide left it until it was pitch black and picked a paddock that was separated by at least 100m of grassland. Not sure if you’re more likely to see the Loch Ness monster or the highland cows at this point! Further to this, the tour was 12 hours and the guide was talking extremely loud the whole time with the microphone and in between playing hardstyle music on full blast (even our own headphones at full volume couldn’t overpower it). He said that if someone was even 1 minute late he would play ear worm songs as punishment. We thought he was kidding… he was not. One couple was late by 3 minutes and we listened to baby shark, what did the fox say and multiple other ridiculously annoying songs for 15 minutes on full blast - this was 10 hours into the trip! With a tour that states “highlands” in the title it was extremely sad to pay $120 AUD to drive straight past the most amazing scenery that other groups had stopped at to enjoy and take pictures of. We had lengthy, 30 minute history lessons on sites that we drove past and saw for a maximum of 10 seconds. It was grating to say the least. The highlight of the day was paying $120 to sit on a bus and not even see the highlands, and then pay an additional $40 to sit on a public boat to go on Loch Ness. One would think this would be included… since we did nothing but drive to this place ? The trip was basically a lesson in irony, a trip to the highlands was more like a trip with low times. With sunset at 3:30pm the trip itinerary was weighted towards the end of the day, however you would think that the organisers would account for this and put the sightseeing at the start of the day when we could actually utilise light and properly see stuff, but no we were getting out of the bus in pitch black and told to look around… ridiculous if you ask me! Hours upon hours on a bus with no sightseeing and one Loch Ness (more like loch mess of a tour) and then 2 hours in pitch black of “sightseeing”- with nothing in sight.

This tour had excellent views on the way up to Loch Ness. The stop there (Fort Augustus) was nice, and the Loch Ness boating option was great. The boat was large, and had some onboard food/drinks.

Great tour! We saw the main highlights of the Highlands. I felt each of the stops was adequately timed and I never felt rushed. Our guide was friendly and very informative.

A great experience with Stephen despite the short daylight, well managed and timed, well entertaining, great atmosphere the whole day

I would definitely recommend tour guide had good information and good jokes I felt bad because the group wasn’t laughing

The tour was a lot of fun. David was a great driver and super funny. He’s the kind of guy you’d want to sit near at a pub. The tour was mostly spent in the bus, but views were worth it. We took this tour end of November so it was dark by 3pm.