This grand tour of Scotland is a classic road cycling tour, connecting the Highland capital of Inverness to the Scottish capital of Edinburgh.

Riding some 230 miles (370km) on quiet and spectacularly scenic roads, you will experience an incredible range of trip highlights showcasing the best of Scotland’s natural and cultural heritage and warm hospitality.

From visiting the Royal Lochnagar Distillery, to a guided tour of the ‘most beautiful’ castle in Scotland, this trip will leave you wanting for nothing.

Leave the car and tour bus behind, safe in the knowledge that our guides and vehicle support will take care of you. With great accommodation and food completing the itinerary, join us for a cycling adventure that is grand in every sense.

Our Approach to this Road Cycling Trip

We balance great guiding and insights when you would like it, alongside the freedom to explore at your pace. At breakfast each day, you will receive a guide briefing. Depending upon your preference, you can choose to ride with your guide or simply follow the route notes and re-group at designated points along the way. Typically our clients really enjoy the insights our guides are able to provide into the nature, history and culture of Scotland.

Throughout the day your second guide and support vehicle will always be close to hand to provide drinks, snacks and a friendly ride should you need it. The support vehicle will take care of all of your luggage transferring it from hotel to hotel each day.

Bike Hire

Most of our clients choose to hire bikes but you are more than welcome to bring your own. We are confident in saying that our hire fleet is the best in Scotland with a range of models and sizes to suit each rider.   The bikes we use are brand new each season and maintained to the highest standards. You can choose between:

• Road Bikes: Merida Ride 400
• Hybrid: Merida Shaper 400

Each bike comes equipped with a Garmin Bike Computer loaded with the ride information and mapping for your trip, compact handlebar bag (with map case) to carry your daily essentials e.g. camera, snacks, waterproofs plus a saddle bag with spare tube and tire levers. On each trip we carry a wide range of spares to customize your bike to your requirements and to keep it running smoothly during the trip.

Level of Difficulty

This trip is for people who regularly enjoy cycling and may have joined a multi-day cycle tour holiday before. On this trip you can expect rolling and sometimes hilly terrain. You are comfortable climbing and descending steep roads as long as there are plenty of stops for photos!

This morning, meet your guide and fellow cyclists for the week!

We start the day with a trip briefing and bike fitting to make sure everyone is comfortable before we set off. Our route quickly takes us out of the Highland capital and into the surrounding countryside soon reaching the historic battlefield of Culloden.

From Culloden we head east on flat and fast roads, past Cawdor, where we stop for lunch at a great little tearoom and then into the Whisky Country of Speyside. An ancient military road dating from the 1700’s leads to our first overnight stop at Grantown on Spey.

Today we ride from west to east across the UK’s largest and most spectacular National Park – Cairngorms National Park. There are a few hills to contend with today, but the exciting descents and superb views more than reward the effort!

Our first stop is in the village of Tomintoul – the highest in the Highlands. It’s also home to one of Scotland’s best whisky shops, which is well worth a visit. From Tomintoul, it is a stiff climb over the Lecht pass. From the summit, the views over Royal Deeside are simply superb on a clear day.

From here a long descent, one final climb and then a 10km run downhill delivers us to the lovely village of Ballater and home for the next two nights.

We take it easy today with a short ride on Royal Deeside. This is one of the most beautiful corners of Scotland brimming with Highland history and culture.

Our route will take us on a loop along and above the flowing River Dee, through the hills to Balmoral Castle and Lochnagar Distillery. Unless the Queen is at home(!), we can visit the castle and grounds and follow this up with a distillery visit and tasting.

All that remains is a very relaxed ride back to Ballater and dinner at one of the village’s excellent restaurants.

Our journey continues east along the River Dee and then through the picturesque Forest of Birse on rolling and very scenic roads.

An early lunch sets us up for the climb over the Cairn O’ Mount, a mountain pass that has prehistoric origins. A stone cairn at the top of the pass is said to be more than 4000 years old. It’s a challenging climb to reach the top but the vehicle is close by should you need it. Either way, there are commanding views from the summit. From here, we get our first glimpse of the North Sea and Scotland’s East Coast, which we will be following later in the trip.

It’s all downhill from here – a superb 10 miles of fast riding all the way to our overnight halt at Edzell, Angus.

This morning, we leave the Cairngorm Mountains behind, head south first to Kirriemuir and then on to Glamis Castle. The ancestral home of the Earl of Strathmore for over 600 years, Glamis, is known as “the most beautiful castle in Scotland”. We park up the bikes here for a guided tour of the castle and its stories, tales and secrets.

A relaxing lunch in the restaurant follows before we continue our journey, traversing the low-lying Sidlaw Hills en route to our waterfront accommodation in the City of Dundee.

This will definitely be one of the favourite days of the trip, with fast and generally flat riding through St. Andrews and the lovely coastal fishing villages of Fife.

We’ll make an early start from Dundee, crossing the Tay Estuary and reaching St. Andrews with plenty of time to explore the ancient town, with its remarkable castle, abbey and golf courses.

Following the coast we pass through several villages in turn; this is the East Neuk (or “corner”) of Fife. It’s incredibly scenic with the added bonus of this being one of the sunniest parts of Scotland.

We finish our ride in the village of Elie, where we will enjoy a pint by the harbour, before a short transfer to our hotel in Aberdour.