Best of Ireland & Scotland - Premium

You'll arrive in Dublin with amber light glowing behind etched pub windows, brass gleaming at the bar and the notes of a fiddle or bodhrán perhaps slipping through an open door. At your hotel, you have time to pause before joining your Travel Director for dinner. Around the table, you learn the names behind the new faces and meet the people who will travel beside you through Ireland and Scotland.

With your Local Specialist, you'll follow the Liffey beside the quay, watching broken reflections ripple below the Custom House’s green dome and carved stone. You'll pass the Guinness Storehouse and the medieval walls of Christchurch Cathedral before seeing St Patrick’s Cathedral, founded in 1191, where cool stone, dark oak and carved memorials line the soaring nave. At Trinity College, you'll wander between stately façades in courtyards that have welcomed scholars since 1592. You'll enter the Long Room, where the faint scent of timber hangs beneath dark galleries, marble busts and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Therein lies the 9th-century Book of Kells, with its sparkling jewel-bright pigments, tiny figures and intricate knotwork painted across vellum by Celtic monks more than a thousand years ago.

At the Irish National Stud, you'll move behind the scenes of the stud farm, with the scent of hay and clipped grass in the air as the soft thud of hooves sounds from the yards. You'll learn how some of Ireland’s finest racehorses begin their lives before following the winding paths of the Japanese Gardens. Designed by Tassa and Minoru Eida, the gardens portray the journey of a soul beneath arching branches, past lawns clipped smooth as velvet and along paths that curve between shadow and light. Continuing south, you'll reach Cork, Ireland’s second most populous city, where the River Lee divides around the centre in two broad channels. Along Grand Parade, you'll pass City Hall and Cork Opera House while stone façades and open sky shimmer across the water.

Blarney Castle is where your choice experience begins as you may climb the medieval tower’s tight spiral stair, grazing rough stone with your fingertips before leaning back to kiss the Blarney Stone and test its legendary promise of the ‘gift of the gab’. Or follow the Wishing Steps to the Witch’s Kitchen beneath ancient yews, with curious rock formations and themed gardens waiting across the estate. In Killarney, you’ll settle into a traditional jaunting car, swaying with the carriage as it rolls from town into Killarney National Park. Your day ends at your hotel in Dingle, a fishing town beside a sheltered natural harbour, with a cool sea breeze wafting through the harbour and the Atlantic stretching beyond the peninsula.

Surf flashes white below the cliffs as you follow the Slea Head route around the Dingle Peninsula after a Relaxed Start, while the Blasket Islands lie beyond the headlands. Across Corca Dhuibhne, you pass ancient beehive huts and early Christian sites as wind combs the grass and the Atlantic breaks against the headlands below. Later, you may join an Optional Experience in falconry, raising a gloved arm as a bird of prey returns to you. Join another Optional Experience at Dingle’s oldest public house, where you'll taste a local tipple and listen as musicians play and stories travel from one teller to the next.

From the ferry deck, you watch County Clare grow nearer across the Shannon Estuary, the engine’s low thrum beneath you. Beyond the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre, you'll follow the paved path and look down 214 metres of sheer rock to the sea, and an unbroken horizon. You'll cross Galway’s medieval centre to the Lynch Memorial, where a Gothic window and carved skull and crossbones mark one of the city’s most haunting legends. In St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, filtered light falls across the nave as you hear how Christopher Columbus is reputed to have prayed here before sailing west. Beside the water, you'll pass beneath the weathered Spanish Arch as the Corrib pours towards Galway Bay. You'll finish in Eyre Square, where green lawns soften the city’s old façades in the park dedicated to John F Kennedy.

Connemara stretches ahead in rust-coloured peatland, pale granite and dark loughs, with the Twelve Bens rising beyond the water. You'll travel north through this wild landscape before reaching Sligo, where the River Garavogue rushes through the town, murmuring beneath the bridges, while the lakes and mountains of Yeats Country recall the places that stirred W.B. Yeats’s imagination. During your free time, choose a table for lunch or follow the river through the centre at your own pace. Later, you'll cross into Northern Ireland and continue to Londonderry. Over dinner, you'll taste ingredients from the north-west’s surrounding fields, rivers and coast as the first evening in the city unfolds.

Ronan leads you onto Londonderry’s 17th-century walls, where weathered cannon barrels overlook the rooftops and his tales of siege, survival and divided loyalties follow you around the ramparts. Shipquay Street slopes between Georgian townhouses towards the Guildhall, where red sandstone, pointed arches and panes of stained glass overlook the square. On the UNESCO-listed Giant’s Causeway, you'll move among more than 40,000 basalt columns, their hexagonal tops packed together like a vast black mosaic as white water bursts through the narrow gaps. The Antrim Coast then carries you towards Ballygally Bay, where you look out from your hotel across the long curve of shore and open sea.

Across the Irish Sea, the ferry carries you towards Scotland, its pale wake unspooling behind you along a passage used for centuries by traders, migrants and families. On a clear day, you may pick out Ailsa Craig beyond the rail, a solitary volcanic island whose granite has been cut for curling stones since the 19th century. The 29th Laird and Lady greet you before guiding you through Craufurdland Castle. Then you'll sit down for afternoon tea, tasting small sandwiches and slices of cake inside the castle. You’ll reach Glasgow, once loud with hammering from the Clyde shipyards and still distinguished by Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s strong geometry, spare interiors and stylised roses.

Loch Lomond opens beside you in dark water and wooded banks as you follow the Bonnie Banks into the Highlands. The road winds beneath Glencoe’s steep ridges, where you hear how 38 members of Clan MacDonald were killed in 1692 after welcoming government soldiers into their homes. Standing before the Commando Memorial, you may, if weather permits, catch a glimpse of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, piercing the horizon. You'll trace the Great Glen north to Loch Ness and board a cruise across its ink-dark water. The hull hums beneath you as forested shores and historic landmarks pass by, while tales of unexplained sightings tempt you to search the loch for Scotland’s most famous monster.

Beside the River Ness, you’ll take in Inverness before travelling to Culloden Moor, where heather covers the exposed ground and clan stones sit low against the sky. Inside the Visitor Centre, you'll examine artefacts from both armies before the immersive battle theatre surrounds you with the sound and fury of the Jacobites’ final charge. Back in Inverness, you follow the warm scent of malt to the gleam of copper stills at Uile-bheist. During this MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience, you’ll taste a wee dram, feeling its heat linger on your tongue as tales of whisky smugglers and Highland legends accompany the distillery’s craft.

Amid the Grampians, you’ll pass Blair Castle’s white turrets between the trees before crossing the Tay towards St Andrews. The Old Course stretches beside the North Sea, its velvet-green links cut by deep bunkers and centuries of play. During your free time, wander through the university’s sandstone courts where William and Catherine first met, or head to West Sands, where the beach runs wide beneath the open sky. You’ll cross the Forth Road Bridge high above the water and continue to Edinburgh, where you may join an Optional Experience featuring peppery haggis, ceilidh music and dancing. On selected departures, massed pipes and drums roll across the castle esplanade during The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, with Edinburgh Castle lit above you.

As you move along Princes Street, you'll pass between two Edinburghs: the New Town’s pale stone, broad avenues and measured crescents, and the Old Town rising opposite in dark towers, steep closes and chimneyed roofs. With your Local Specialist, you'll take in the Scott Monument’s black Gothic spire before tracing the ordered elegance of the 18th-century New Town. The streets tighten as you enter the Old Town, passing the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the monarch’s official Scottish residence, before climbing the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle. Inside, the immense iron barrel of Mons Meg rests against the fortress stone, while the Honours of Scotland gleam in the Crown Room, gold and enamel catching the light. The afternoon is yours to browse the shops or follow one of Edinburgh’s narrow wynds. Later, you’ll join your fellow travellers for dinner and wine, tasting modern Scottish cooking.

After breakfast, your 14-day journey through Ireland and Scotland comes to an end, with transfers to Edinburgh Airport.