Inverness and Dundee

24-30 May 2026

Eighteen hours of sunlight.
Sunrise at 4:36 am, sunset at 10:53 pm

Inverness

24-26 May 2026

On the Way to Inverness

**Lots of detail. Better than a DK guide for Scotland.**

After reading many novels over the years that feature Scottish moors or heaths, Bonnie wondered exactly what these are. Moors are upland peat bogs. They are unsuitable for agriculture and often stretch for miles. Heaths are generally wetter, lowland peat bogs. After driving through many desolate moors in Scotland, it is clear how walkers could easily be lost and never found again.

Bonnie also remembered reading Boswell’s account of traveling to Scotland with Dr. Johnson in 1773. These two London urbanites found Scotland unbelievably remote and primitive, even savage. The Isle of Skye had no roads at all, so they traveled there on horseback with a guide.

Lodging in Inverness

We landed on an unglamorous, working-class block in Inverness, in the midst of an unglamorous business side of the city, but we had only a ten-minute walk to the city center. The Airbnb host, Milos, has renovated four of the five units in the building. (The top unit is owned by a young Canadian who is second in charge of the Inverness Castle Experience, which is a key tourist stop.)

Robert chatted several times with the gray-bearded eccentric downstairs who, despite the chilly weather, seemed to spend most of his time in the garden shed in the backyard wearing a sweater over his pajamas. (Bonnie wondered if she was slipping into a Mike Leigh movie.) Many of the buildings on this long block seem to be short-term rentals, no doubt aided by proximity to the downtown as well as the railway and bus stations.

Inverness, a town of 50,000, boasts of being the capital of the Scottish highlands, and we saw plenty of stores with tartan scarves, kilts, and all the trimmings. The ornate Victorian buildings in the old city center are sooty and forbidding, but the west side of town is a pleasant, leafy residential area with parks and impressive public sports facilities, contributing to the city’s high ranking for quality of life in the UK. But there are not many highlights for tourists in this city. Bonnie can’t figure out what to think about it.

Hop-On Hop-Off Bus

This has become a useful habit.

Wandering

Castle Experience

Multi-format self-guided tour of the castle that only a few years ago served as a police station and prison. The building has been rebuilt many times over the years. The city has invested heavily in this 90-minute video, audio, text production to give visitors a reason to explore Inverness. The restaurant is a great space for lingering, finding vegan pastries, and sampling whiskey.

Eating and Sipping

Breakfast

Large double shot coffee latte + scone = 6 pounds ($8.08) —Special price

On the Way to Dundee

Bonnie suggested two stops on the way from Inverness to Dundee. The first was the Culloden Battlefield. The second stop was Balmoral Castle.

Culloden Battlefield, a National Trust site, is the location of the battle of 1746, the most important in Scottish history, between the Jacobites, largely 5,000 clansmen lead by Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the British Government. The Brits, with guns, horses, and cannons and 8,000 soldiers won decisively in a hour. They reinforced their victory by banning clans, kilts, bagpipes, Scottish whiskey—everything Scottish—for nearly a century. At the battlefield an impressive museum details the complicated coalitions on both sides and the years leading up to the fight.

Balmoral Castle is the private property of King Charles III, purchased by Queen Victoria in the mid 1800s. Victoria and her husband Prince Albert expanded and reconstructed the castle for their growing family and attendants, but it is still more modest than we expected. The castle sits in an extensive park with lawns and a mix of mature trees. The broad walking paths are used by many visitors and their dogs. The setting is lovely.

This is a working estate of 54,000 acres with cattle, farming, and hunting for deer, elk, and grouse, although we couldn’t see all of that. The grounds around the castle, including cafe and gift shop, are open to the public from late March to late July. They are closed in August when the royal family occupies the castle.

The drive to Balmoral Castle took us on small roads through the immense Cairngorms National Park on the Highland Tourist and Snow Road routes. The scenery was varied and spectacular. It was definitely worth a detour off the main highway.

Culloden Battlefield

On the Way to Balmoral Castle

**Rivals the traffic cones in New Zealand**

Balmoral Castle

**We saw tulips in bloom at the beginning of our trip in Amsterdam and now near the end in Scotland.**

Dundee

26-30 May 2026

Bonnie likes to point out that Dundee is just west of the North Sea. Makes for cold winds.

Lodging

Airbnb can surprise you. Central locations can bring you to “marginal” neighborhoods, at least at first sight. But once you orient yourself, you appreciate the proximity to the town center and the short walks to primary sites.

**The only entrance is from the car park**

V&A Dundee

Bonnie gravitated to Dundee because of the design museum. The Victoria and Albert museum in London opened this branch in Dundee in 2018, not long after the city was named a UNESCO City of Design in 2014. Exhibits are beautifully displayed and labels provide great narratives. The building by Kengo Kuma establishes a bold new landmark, part of the city’s effort to rejuvenate the waterfront. As with some splashy architecture, the entry was hard to find. We circled the entire building once, and only when we saw a trickle of people exiting did we know where to look. The cafe is terrific.

Being About

Saint Paul’s Cathedral

The Jute Museum

In the late 1800s, Dundee was at its peak in the production of jute and in the whaling industry. Jute processing dominated the city’s economy. Jute alone employed more than 50,000, mostly women and children because of the ability to pay them lower wages. Men took over rearing the kids. Dundee became known as “she town.” But when processing jute shifted to India where jute is grown this effectively eliminated the industry in Dundee. Whaling that supplied oil for jute processing also ended with the loss of demand and the diminished number of whales because of overhunting.

The jute museum is impressive, detailing the processing as well as the social life in the city. We spent at least 90 minutes there and could have spent more.