Eating Around an Inverness Tour Day
Not one fare listed here includes a meal. Every listing excludes food and drink. The routes are built around a town stop where you can buy some — usually an hour, in a village whose cafés are absorbing three coaches at once. Knowing where that stop is, and how long it lasts, is the difference between lunch and a packet of crisps. That includes the Inverness whisky tours that run twelve hours.
No fare here includes lunch
It is worth stating plainly because the longer days look like they should. Twelve hours, one guide, one coach, and your own lunch. A handful of tours put bottled water or a dram on board and one includes snacks, but none of them feeds you.
Where each route actually stops
| Route | The lunch stop | How long | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isle of Skye | Portree | An hour, sometimes ninety minutes | The harbour front has the most places and the most competition for them |
| Loch Ness, western shore | Fort Augustus | Forty-five minutes to three hours | The canal locks are the entertainment while you eat |
| Loch Ness, eastern routes | Beauly | About an hour | A village square with a handful of places, and fewer open on a Sunday |
| The far north | Wick, with coffee at Golspie earlier | About an hour | Working towns rather than tourist stops, which usually makes them easier |
| Glenfinnan and Mallaig | Fort William, then Mallaig | Two hours and one hour | Mallaig is a fishing port, so the fish is the obvious order |
| Culloden and Glen Affric | Beauly | About an hour | The Culloden visitor centre has a café if the timing lands that way |
When the stop is shorter than you think
An hour at a village stop is not an hour to eat. Take off the walk from where the coach parks, the queue that forms when three coaches arrive together, and the ten minutes you need to be back before the driver counts heads. A comfortable sit-down lunch needs closer to ninety. On the routes that give you an hour, the sandwich-and-walk plan is the one that works.
Breakfast before a 7:45 kerb
Most places in the middle of Inverness are not open at seven. If your coach goes before eight, the practical answer is something bought the night before or from the supermarkets near the station, eaten on the road. On the northern run, Dunrobin Castle has a tearoom of its own if the timing lands well, though you will not reach it until late morning. The first coffee stop on a northern route is Golspie, roughly an hour and a half out; on a Skye route it is Invermoriston.
The Victorian Market food hall
The food hall at the eastern end of the Victorian Market is the most useful thing in the city for a tour traveller. It is indoors and two minutes from three departure kerbs. It is open through the middle of the day, which is when you are most likely to have an awkward hour to fill.
Coming back at eight in the evening
A twelve-hour day returns around 20:00. The kitchens that stay open latest are along the river and around Church Street and Academy Street, rather than out towards the retail parks. Book ahead in July and August: Inverness is a small city and a lot of coaches come back at once.
Whisky, and where the distillery stops fit
Several routes here pass or stop at a distillery. The Singleton at Glen Ord and the Great Glen Distillery in the city both appear, and a couple of days offer you a dram on board. Tastings are not usually inside the fare. One private half-day is built around whisky and gin specifically and finishes at a distillery in Inverness itself.
What to carry on a twelve-hour day
Water, something to eat that is not the lunch stop, and small change. Several coaches carry no toilet, and the comfort breaks are the scheduled stops. The useful discipline is to eat when the coach stops rather than when you are hungry.
Frequently asked questions
Is lunch included on a Highland day tour?
Is Dunrobin Castle open in winter?
Are Inverness Scotland ticket prices per person or per group?
Pick a day by its stop, not just its price
Every card says where the route breaks and for how long, so you know whether lunch is an hour in Portree or twenty minutes at a viewpoint.
See also what a day costs once the gates are added in and what to do with the hours in between. Compare the routes on Inverness Scotland Tours.