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>easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh Another way to think about it is to stop somewhere outside of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is an easy half-day trip away. Walk 200

>easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh Another way to think about it is to stop somewhere outside of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is an easy half-day trip away. Walk 200 yards of the Royal Mile from the castle. It just repeats with the same kind of tourist shops for the rest of it. Now get back in your car and go and see some of Scotland!

ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
But don't do the thing that American tourists do where they say "Oh we're staying in Edinburgh and on Wednesday we're going to drive up to Skye to see Dun-vay-gin Castle because it's our ancestral seat because we're totally MacLeods you know" You won't be able to drive from Edinburgh to even Kyle and back in a day, never mind up to Dunvegan. You just won't. I could drive you from Edinburgh to Dunvegan and back in a day but I can absolutely guarantee you're going to hate every single terrifying mile of the journey and you won't get to see much.
- theoreticalmal 9mo ago
  Apple says Edinburgh to Skye is a 3.5 hour drive, mostly along the A9. My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. What makes the trip terrifying and slower than what Apple says?
  - mm0lqf 9mo ago
    > My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. Not in Scotland, some of them aren't dualled (just a single carriageway in each direction), narrow, windey, full of terrible potholes and animals you can hit etc... its a 5-6 hour drive in reality source: Live in Edinburgh
  - tolien 9mo ago
    Google Maps says between 5 and 6 hours and 227 miles - doing that in 3.5 hours would be averaging 65mph. Good luck with that, especially when the speed limit on the A9 itself is 60 mph for cars! The US interstate is probably more comparable with UK motorways.
    - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
      I can safely do it in good conditions in six hours and I'd consider myself a very experienced driver for that route, having driven from Skye to Glasgow or Edinburgh and back a couple of times a week for years.
      - tolien 9mo ago
        Absolutely, doing it in half that time would be madness though!
        ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
        Doing it in half the time would be impossible. To travel 250 miles in three hours you'd need to keep up an average of 83mph-ish for the whole journey. I shouldn't think there are many places you can reach a peak speed of 83mph for long on the whole road.
        tolien 9mo ago
        Some lunatic will take it as a challenge :-) (and become a statistic)
  - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
    Both Apple and Google Maps greatly underestimate travel times on anything other than perfectly straight motorways. If you've never driven here before you can at least double their estimate, easily - and that assumes you are at least reasonably proficient at driving on the left at all. The A9 is the most dangerous road in Europe, and you'll be doing 50mph at most along that because there's nowhere to overtake and that's the maximum speed trucks can go at, so you'll end up in a queue behind a truck. Depending on the route you take, you might go through Inverness, in which case once you get off the A9 most of the road you'll be on looks like this, for about 120 miles: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9L5cSejT1eyAVR2E7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/9L5cSejT1eyAVR2E7 Once you get to Dalwhinnie you can turn off the A9 and start heading across to the A82, which is really pretty especially in the snow but will be mostly road like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qv1L21jk59EEAHZs9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/qv1L21jk59EEAHZs9 Notice how it's not actually wide enough for two cars? But that's still a 60mph road, although you'd be lucky to be getting up to more than about 50mph. And you'll be driving on the wrong side of the road, in an unfamiliar car, with a manual gearbox. Good luck.
  - arethuza 9mo ago
    The A9 is actually pretty scary in parts because it alternates between dual carriageway and single carriageway and people have been known to get that wrong and thing they are on a dual carriageway when it is a single carriageway...
    - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
      I've done that and I've driven on the A9 hundreds if not thousands of times. What's worse is that the inbuilt mapping in a lot of new cars think bits of it are 70mph dual carriageway when it's still single carriageway, and vice-versa.
      - arethuza 9mo ago
        Same - driven up and down there countless times, but I still sometimes get alarmed on some of the dual carriageway parts where you can't see the other carriageway and I have a momentary panic of "This is a dual carriageway, isn't it?".
- sjclemmy 9mo ago
  Which reminds me of a weekend I took a few years ago where we drove to Edinburgh from Manchester on day 1 then up to Arisaig on day 2 to camp on the beach - then back to Edinburgh for a wedding on day 3 and then back to Arisaig the next day to continue the long weekend. Then full day drive back to Manchester.
- tolien 9mo ago
  I did see a Reddit thing where some tourists were planning to stay in the Lake District and visit Edinburgh and Stonehenge, all during winter. Could've been ragebait, to be fair - they weren't interested when people pointed out that things like weather, hours of daylight, travel time were all going to be against them (or even that the Lake District is a pretty tourist-friendly place to start with).
- arethuza 9mo ago
  That's nothing, I had some people ask me if they could drive from Edinburgh to Rome for the day!

ErroneousBosh 9mo ago

But don't do the thing that American tourists do where they say "Oh we're staying in Edinburgh and on Wednesday we're going to drive up to Skye to see Dun-vay-gin Castle because it's our ancestral seat because we're totally MacLeods you know" You won't be able to drive from Edinburgh to even Kyle and back in a day, never mind up to Dunvegan. You just won't. I could drive you from Edinburgh to Dunvegan and back in a day but I can absolutely guarantee you're going to hate every single terrifying mile of the journey and you won't get to see much.

theoreticalmal 9mo ago
Apple says Edinburgh to Skye is a 3.5 hour drive, mostly along the A9. My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. What makes the trip terrifying and slower than what Apple says?
- mm0lqf 9mo ago
  > My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. Not in Scotland, some of them aren't dualled (just a single carriageway in each direction), narrow, windey, full of terrible potholes and animals you can hit etc... its a 5-6 hour drive in reality source: Live in Edinburgh
- tolien 9mo ago
  Google Maps says between 5 and 6 hours and 227 miles - doing that in 3.5 hours would be averaging 65mph. Good luck with that, especially when the speed limit on the A9 itself is 60 mph for cars! The US interstate is probably more comparable with UK motorways.
  - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
    I can safely do it in good conditions in six hours and I'd consider myself a very experienced driver for that route, having driven from Skye to Glasgow or Edinburgh and back a couple of times a week for years.
    - tolien 9mo ago
      Absolutely, doing it in half that time would be madness though!
      - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
        Doing it in half the time would be impossible. To travel 250 miles in three hours you'd need to keep up an average of 83mph-ish for the whole journey. I shouldn't think there are many places you can reach a peak speed of 83mph for long on the whole road.
        tolien 9mo ago
        Some lunatic will take it as a challenge :-) (and become a statistic)
- ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
  Both Apple and Google Maps greatly underestimate travel times on anything other than perfectly straight motorways. If you've never driven here before you can at least double their estimate, easily - and that assumes you are at least reasonably proficient at driving on the left at all. The A9 is the most dangerous road in Europe, and you'll be doing 50mph at most along that because there's nowhere to overtake and that's the maximum speed trucks can go at, so you'll end up in a queue behind a truck. Depending on the route you take, you might go through Inverness, in which case once you get off the A9 most of the road you'll be on looks like this, for about 120 miles: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9L5cSejT1eyAVR2E7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/9L5cSejT1eyAVR2E7 Once you get to Dalwhinnie you can turn off the A9 and start heading across to the A82, which is really pretty especially in the snow but will be mostly road like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qv1L21jk59EEAHZs9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/qv1L21jk59EEAHZs9 Notice how it's not actually wide enough for two cars? But that's still a 60mph road, although you'd be lucky to be getting up to more than about 50mph. And you'll be driving on the wrong side of the road, in an unfamiliar car, with a manual gearbox. Good luck.
- arethuza 9mo ago
  The A9 is actually pretty scary in parts because it alternates between dual carriageway and single carriageway and people have been known to get that wrong and thing they are on a dual carriageway when it is a single carriageway...
  - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
    I've done that and I've driven on the A9 hundreds if not thousands of times. What's worse is that the inbuilt mapping in a lot of new cars think bits of it are 70mph dual carriageway when it's still single carriageway, and vice-versa.
    - arethuza 9mo ago
      Same - driven up and down there countless times, but I still sometimes get alarmed on some of the dual carriageway parts where you can't see the other carriageway and I have a momentary panic of "This is a dual carriageway, isn't it?".
sjclemmy 9mo ago
Which reminds me of a weekend I took a few years ago where we drove to Edinburgh from Manchester on day 1 then up to Arisaig on day 2 to camp on the beach - then back to Edinburgh for a wedding on day 3 and then back to Arisaig the next day to continue the long weekend. Then full day drive back to Manchester.
tolien 9mo ago
I did see a Reddit thing where some tourists were planning to stay in the Lake District and visit Edinburgh and Stonehenge, all during winter. Could've been ragebait, to be fair - they weren't interested when people pointed out that things like weather, hours of daylight, travel time were all going to be against them (or even that the Lake District is a pretty tourist-friendly place to start with).
arethuza 9mo ago
That's nothing, I had some people ask me if they could drive from Edinburgh to Rome for the day!