Introduction

I've made the trip from England to Scotland more times than I can count, and there's one part of the journey I never tire of: the overnight sleeper train. There's something about falling asleep south of the border and waking up in the Highlands that never loses its magic. The Highlands themselves are a must-see at least once in a lifetime — wild, empty, and genuinely spirit-freeing in a way that's hard to describe until you're standing in the middle of it. Edinburgh, meanwhile, keeps surprising me. Every visit, I find something new — a neighbourhood I hadn't wandered into before, a restaurant tucked down a close I'd walked past a dozen times — it's one of the most vibrant, quietly reinventing cities I know.

Five Day Exploration

From Inverness, the route wound through some of Scotland's most dramatic scenery on the way to Braemar, taking in the wild, remote waters of Loch Muick along the way, before a stop at Balmoral Castle. A whisky tasting and distillery tour rounded out the day, with an evening at the Fife Arms.

The following morning brought a private guided tour of the Highlands, before the drive south to Edinburgh — a city that genuinely rewards two full days rather than one. Private guides, recommended based on the family's interests, led the way through the Old Town, the New Town, and everywhere in between. Two nights at the Gleneagles Townhouse gave a proper base to explore at a relaxed pace — Edinburgh has a way of rewarding wandering as much as it rewards a guided itinerary.

From Edinburgh, the route turned south-west, into the heart of Dumfries and Galloway and the historic parish of Rerrick — a place with a story every bit as rich as its landscape. Rerrick's coastline of cliffs, caves, and hidden bays made it a smugglers' haunt through the 1700s, with reports of up to fifty men and two hundred horses moving contraband past Rascarrel and Barclay Bays on the way to Glasgow — and there's real reason to believe the Graham family, ancestors on this branch of the tree, lived and farmed precisely in the area where that smuggling activity took place. A century earlier, the parish had its own brush with the uncanny: the 1695 "Rerrick apparition," a haunting reported at Ring-Croft of Stocking, caused a stir across Scotland at the time — and, intriguingly, members of the Graham family were living in the same area, near Collin Mill, within a century of the events. That evening's stay at Balcary Bay House sat right at the heart of this same parish.

The final leg of the journey headed to Glasgow, with a private guided tour of the city before an evening at the Dakota Glasgow, ahead of the journey home.

This itinerary shared with the permission of the family.