The Highlands
(2 Nights)

Your cabin is ready and waiting when you board at Edinburgh Waverley in the early afternoon. Once you have settled in, the train heads north through the old Kingdom of Fife before climbing into the Highlands, and the change in the landscape is striking as the farmland falls away and the hills close in around the line. There is no better way to arrive in the Highlands than by train, and the Royal Scotsman gives that arrival a proper sense of occasion.

Dinner this evening is a relaxed and sociable affair, and afterwards the Observation Car comes into its own with entertainment that sets the tone for the rest of the journey. The train spends the night at Boat of Garten, a peaceful village on the private Strathspey Railway on the edge of the Cairngorms, about as far from the bustle of the city as it is possible to feel.

Breakfast comes with Highland views from the window, and then a coach takes you into the Cairngorms National Park to Rothiemurchus Estate. Here you spend the morning with food anthropologist Ghillie Basan and her son, learning about the wildlife that shares this landscape and picking up some of the survival skills that Highland life once depended on.

Lunch is a barbecue in the open air, paired with kombucha and built around the seasonal produce of the Highlands. It is an informal, memorable meal and a lovely way to round off the morning.

The Royal Scotsman collects everyone at Carrbridge for the afternoon. For those who would like it, there is an optional visit to Strathisla Distillery in Keith, which dates from 1786 and is widely held to be the oldest working distillery in the Highlands. It is also one of the prettiest, and its malt lies at the heart of the Chivas Regal blends. If you have never seen a working Highland distillery, this is a fine place to start.

Later the train turns south, with views of the coast and the rolling hills of Aberdeenshire and Angus slipping past as the light fades. The evening brings the gala dinner, a dressier occasion than the night before, followed by live jazz in the Observation Car. The train stays overnight in Dundee.

Take your time over a final breakfast as the train leaves Dundee and makes its way back to Edinburgh Waverley, where the journey ends. Two nights and three days covering the Cairngorms, a morning on one of the great Highland estates, the chance to visit a historic distillery and a gala dinner on the east coast is a great deal to fit into a short break, yet the Royal Scotsman manages it without any sense of hurry.

Itineraries and timings shown may be changed for seasonal or operational reasons.