Culloden Battlefield and Clava Cairns From Inverness
Six miles east of Inverness, a stretch of open moor and a set of Bronze Age burial cairns sit within a few minutes of each other. They are four thousand years apart, one charges admission and the other does not, and most day tours take them together. Several of the Inverness castle tours run this way out of the city.
16 April 1746, in an hour
The battle was fought on this moor on 16 April 1746, and the stone raised on the field says exactly that. It was the last pitched battle fought on British soil. It ended the Jacobite rising in under an hour, on ground that suited the government army and not the one standing on it.
What makes the place land is not the scale but the flatness. You walk out onto open moorland with the lines marked, the clan graves under their stones, and very little else. The distance between the two armies turns out to be short.
The visitor centre, and what the ticket covers
The battlefield and its visitor centre are looked after by the National Trust for Scotland. The ticket covers the exhibition and the centre; the moor beyond is where the visit actually happens.
One figure this site does not print. We check admission prices against each attraction’s own pages, and the National Trust for Scotland’s site cannot be read from here. Rather than publish a figure that cannot be checked, this page names which fares include the admission and leaves the current price to the Trust. The days that carry it inside the fare are marked as such, and on those you pay nothing at the gate.
| Tour | Culloden admission | From |
|---|---|---|
| From Inverness: Glen Affric, Culloden, and Clava Cairns Tour | Inside the fare | From $84 per person |
| Glen Affric & Culloden Tour from Inverness Including Admissions | Inside the fare | From $87 per person |
| Loch Ness, Outlander & Urquhart Castle from Inverness | Bought at the gate | From $72 per person |
| Inverness Highlands Bucket List Tour | Bought at the gate | From $163 per person |
| Cawdor Castle, Standing Stones, Culloden and Loch Ness | Bought at the gate | From $187 per person |
| Inverness Castle, Clava, Culloden Battlefield and Loch Ness | Bought at the gate | From $187 per person |
| Loch Ness and Outlander Sites Tour from Inverness | Bought at the gate | From $187 per person |
| Full-Day Outlander Experience in the Scottish Highlands from Inverness | Bought at the gate | From $860 per group, up to 3 |
Clava Cairns, 300 yards east
Signposted from the B9091, three hundred yards east of the battlefield, the Balnuaran of Clava is a group of Bronze Age burial cairns and standing stones in a ring of old trees. Historic Environment Scotland looks after it. It is free to visit and open all year round, and it is on almost every itinerary that includes Culloden.
It is also, quietly, the better photograph of the two — particularly in autumn, when the beeches turn and the light comes through sideways.
Cawdor Castle
Ten miles or so east, Cawdor is a lived-in castle with formal gardens, and the days that stop here give it two hours. It is a different proposition from Inverness Castle back in the city, which is a visitor experience on timed entry rather than a house. For the castle, gardens, grounds and nature trails together, an adult pays £17 and a child aged 6 to 15 pays £8.50. For the gardens and grounds alone it is £10 and £7.50. Neither tour includes it, so it is a gate cost on top of the fare.
Which tours include the admission
A small number do, and one of them puts it in its own title. Everywhere else the exhibition is bought on site, which is worth knowing before you arrive with a coach full of people at the same counter.
Outlander, and what is actually here
Several tours sell the Outlander connection, and the places behind it are real and considerably older than the books: the Clava Cairns, the battlefield itself, Beauly Priory, Fort George and Castle Leod. If that is why you are coming, the private Outlander day covers the widest set of them; if it is not, you will still see most of them on an ordinary Loch Ness run.
See the days that include the battlefield ticket
Some fares carry the Culloden admission inside the price. The cards say which, and what else each of those days reaches.
Most of these days pair the moor with Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. See what a full day costs on the planning page, or compare everything on Inverness Scotland Tours.