Driving in Scotland

[tripod]

OS maps I would think, https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/sho...-scotland.html
For more detailed maps the landranger are 1:50,000 and the explorer are 1:25,000
As long as you can read a map, contours &c your best bet I'd think.

I don't know the standards of maps in the USA but the OS lists ruins and pathways as well as public footpaths for those out of the way places.

Remember your 6 P's

[cessna152towser]

Ardverikie Estate looks like a lovely spot to choose as a base. I've driven past it a few times on the way from Dalwhinnie over to Spean Bridge. The Gate Lodge (bottom centre photo on their website home page) http://www.ardverikie.com/ looks so much like a little fairy tale castle when you see it from the road. My wife would love to rent it for a holiday some year.
Spean Bridge and Fort William are favourite destinations for my summer holidays (vacations) some years so if I'm up that way while you are staying at Ardverikie it would be good to meet up. Jock Scot is based not too far away from Ardverikie so we could perhaps have a mini gathering.

[Angstrom]

I suggest glancing over the Highway Code, especially the signs. As with most traffic signs in the EU they rely more on graphics than text. My wife & I had fun coming up with our own definitions, such as "boomerang right" and "boomerang left".

http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/signs-and-signals.html
https://www.gov.uk/browse/driving/highway-code

[Richrail]

It would be fun to gather with the regimental mess. Count me in. I suppose I ought to bring one kilt. McDuff might be it. I'd like to meet other Xmarkers, too. You can't have Gatelodge, Richrail, it's ours.

I'm waiting to hear back from Ardverikie about reservations this far out. Online they only show reserved dates into early 2016, and of course we'll be going the year after. If I can nail down a date with them, that will be as far as the planning goes for now. Everything else will revolve around that. I'll work out the details nearer to the trip, but driving is the main thing on my mind right now. Just 'cause it will be the first hurdle.

I emailed them a couple of months ago. They said to book about a year out. We need more room so I guess the Gatelodge is yours My wife's sister and her husband are coming along, her sister has volunteered to be the designated driver.

[Mike in Dayton]

I always used public transportation when in the UK which was the London area so I have never driven in the UK. Talking to friends here in the USA that have the following comments stuck in my mind. Renting a car get an automatic so you don't have to deal with trying to shift with the left hand. Since you have driven right-hand drive cars maybe not an issue.

Go online and learn about the correct way to navigate "roundabouts". We don't have too many of those in the USA; at least where I live. For me I think those would be a point of confusion.

[cck]

On my last trip to Scotland I had reserved a car at the Edinburgh Airport. When I went to pick it up I had a bit of a battle. They wanted to charge me about an additional $40/day for insurance coverage! Before I left the US I had discussed this with my auto insurer and my credit card issuer and was told I would have adequate coverage. (Eventually they accepted that.) Most vehicles offered for rental were stick shift, possibly an additional driving challenge.

[tpa]

You should also look at this recent thread re. visiting Scotland.

Be aware also some of the road traffic laws are different in Scotland than they are in England or Wales. In Scotland the drink drive limit is lower, so depending on your physique, a lunchtime beer or glass of wine could lead to an instant driving ban.

Hadn't realised it had changed so much. When I first moved to England, south coast, the standard of drunken driving was much worse than in Scotland. I am going back several decades.

[Bluescelt]

I traveled to Scotland in 2013 on my honeymoon and spent the second week in the area that you are planning to stay. We were about a 20 minute drive from Ardverikie Estate and drove by the gatehouse a few times. We stayed in Laggan on a sheep/cattle farm in a cottage called Creag-Na-Sanais. We also went in May and were there during lambing season so we woke to the lambs bouncing around in the fields just feet from our cottage every morning. It was great! We could have breakfast at the cottage and leave for a daily adventure and be home for afternoon tea.
Some great attractions we saw within a daily drive were Fort William/Glencoe, Loch Ness/Inverness, the Highland Folk Museum in Newtonmore, Pitlochry and Blair Castle. We even ventured over to Aberdeenshire to the Northeast Falconry Center for a great birds of prey experience.
I rented a Vauxall diesel 6-speed manual midsize which was very similar to a Hyundai Sonata and we got an average of 47 MPG for the week. Finding an automatic to rent is tough and a lot more expensive. The back roads especially around the Lochs are narrow but I got used to it pretty quickly. This is the cottage and my little friend

[Livingston]

Definitely right, Sydnie. I'm a paper map kind of guy. In my opinion, if you can't find your way around the world with a map and compass, then you're not read to use GPS.

Very old school myself. I actually train drivers for the ADA buses here in Denver and we make sure they know how to get around using a mapbook before letting them use any type of electronic aid.

We will also be visiting Scotland at about that time. Haven't set exactly when yet but will be mostly in the Highlands; Lismore, Oban and surrounding areas.

[OC Richard]

My wife and I have driven all over Britain, pretty much, from Truro to Inverness, from Portsmouth to Skye, and we truly love driving there.

But! We're Californians, and Californians tend to love to drive. The distances there are small compared to here, so a drive that's nothing to us strikes many British as daunting.

For example we were having breakfast at a B&B in Chester and the woman asks what we intend to see that day. When we say "Stonehenge" she is aghast! But it wasn't all that much of a drive, in California terms.

Now, a good friend of mine never hires a car. He stays with relatives near London and purchases a BritRail pass and takes trips to Edinburgh and Glasgow and so forth. It's wonderful for sure, and the train stations in those Scottish cities put you right in the heart of things, but he's never experienced driving through the Highlands and suddenly have the valley open up in front of you to reveal a lovely lake with Eileen Donan Castle in it, or loaded his car on an ancient rusty ferry that looks like a veteran of Dunkirk for the perilously low-on-the-water trip to Arran, or driven the one-lane roads across wild and barren Skye.