Isle of Skye Travel Forum

We (7 persons) plan to drive VAN from Edinburgh to Inverness, Isle of Skype and stop at glasgow within 3 days. We want to stop 1st night at Inverness. For the 2nd night we perfer portree but it seems too far for us to drive from portree to glasgow within one days so it should be Fort William. After reading from many blogs, for 3 days it seems to short for our plan so Please give any advices the route to drive, must see or don't miss and stop (highlight) and the timeline for us to follow.If it is possible, we need for Inverness and Glasgow also. Thank you very much in advance.

Yutiga.

Portree - Glasgow is possible to drive in 1 day. It is a wonderful trip, especially when the weather is right. Leave early, expect to make many stops. Fort William is handy for a lunch break, filling up the car and doing some groceries. Expect to be on the road all day long, not a bad thing to arrive in Glasgow when the city lights are on.

You could play around with either of these mapping sites to get distance,
driving times, points of interest en route and variou other options.

http://www.theaa.com/route-planner/index.jsp

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/gbr/dyn/controller/Driving_directions#

Just a short ways south of Ft William is Glencoe and there is an interesting interpretive center there.

The drive is doable in one day - but start early as mentioned above.

Last year we drove all around Scotland, and one leg of our trip was from Inverness to Isle of Skye to Fort William, all in one day. We did take time to stop along the way and take in the scenery, we even went on a boat trip on Isle of Skye. It is possible to do in one day, just leave early enough. We left around 8am in Inverness and arrived in Fort William at 9.30pm.

I wouldn't recommend doing Inverness-Skye-Fort William in one day. It isa very nice drive, but believe me you miss A LOT if you do that. Rather, for Inverness-Skye take the coastal road from Inverness to Ullapool, Loch Ewe (Inverewe Gardens), Gairloch, Torridon, Applecross, Plockton, Kyle of Lochalsh, Skye Bridge.

Even if you just drive without getting out of the car, driving the nearly 200 km from Portree to Fort William will take at least 2,5 if not 3 hours.

I agree with crazypaws, it can be done in one day (we did Inverness to Isle of Skye last summer).

From Edinburgh to Inverness it took us around 3.5 hours.
From Inverness across to the West Coast of Scotland there are many nice things (and touristy things) to see: Loch Ness, Glen Affric, Trossachs, Distilleries and just before the Isle of Skye: Eilean Donan Castle.

We found the ViaMichelin website really helpful in planning, as well as Yahoo Maps that gave very accurate travel-time estimates.

adding this link to the useful resources:

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk

Loch Ness IMO is one thing that can safely be skipped. Tourist trap.