Bumping the thread because my wife and I are doing a 2 week UK/Scotland trip in mid September. We are flying into London then taking a train up to Newcastle for a couple days, then a couple days in Edinburgh, a few days in Inverness, back down to Glasgow for a couple days, then the rest of the trip in London.
Lots of good ideas upthread but something I didn’t see mentioned were distilleries. I wouldn’t mind doing a distillery tour while we’re up in the Inverness area. Any good suggestions? Do I need to make reservations ahead of time?
Inverness is on the western edge of the Speyside whisky region, so the short answer is yes, loads within about an hour’s drive.
If youve got a favourite Speyside, this is your chance to visit, otherwise Tomatin is good and probably the closest yo Inverness, Aberlour is worth a visit and has the advantage of being in an attractive small town where you could also b get a meal (never a bad idea if youre doing a tasting).
In Inverness there is a Malt Whisky Experience which while not a distillery will give you a good walk through the history amd process without requiring transport.
Speaking of which, worth looking for a tour operation that will do transport and arrange booking which is safer to have.
Just in case you don’t mean whisky there are gin a few gin distilleries as well. One on the outskirts of Aviemore has tours and one in Perth says it will “soon”. Both are on the train line to Inverness.
Mid September is past peak season, but there will still be plenty of tourists around. Probably better to book, especially if you have one place you want to visit and a short time frame, but maybe not necessary to book very long in advance.
I had a friend visit me who wanted to go to a distillery in the off season. She found the website of a small local one and saw it was all ‘Sold out’, all week. I called them up, as that seemed unlikely, and their response was pretty much ‘Oh, you want to come today? Or tomorrow? No problem, when will you arrive?’ We were met at the entrance and had a private tour. Pretty sure we were the only visitors all day.
It won’t be like that at the bigger places near Inverness, but I can assure you you can find some distillery in Scotland that will have availability if you’re not too picky about which.
That looks awesome. Whisky, Scottish folk music, history… a little bit of everything.
My wife found a couple of tour companies that do one-day trips to a couple of distilleries. And also day trips to Skye. We may wind up doing all three!