What it is

One car, one party, one driver who is also the guide.

A private Highland tour means the vehicle is yours for the day. Nobody else is aboard, the route is agreed with you rather than printed on a ticket, and the person driving is the person telling you what you are looking at.

That last part is worth separating out, because the industry uses two words loosely. A chauffeur drives; a driver-guide drives and guides. Some operators send a chauffeur and add a separate guide, which is two salaries and two people in the car. Some send a chauffeur alone and you look things up yourself. We send one person, which is why the car seats four rather than three.

Ours is also a single car. Not a fleet with a rota — one Tesla and one guide, taking one party a day. That is a real constraint rather than a marketing line: it is why a Saturday in July has to be asked for early, and why nothing on this site can be booked twice.

What it costs

£750 to £1,250 for the day, whichever way you split it.

The price is for the car, the driver and the route. It does not change whether one of you comes or four, which is the single most useful thing to understand before you compare quotes.

Why per car and not per head

The cost of the day is the car, the electricity and somebody's twelve hours. None of those change when a fourth person gets in. Charging per person would mean a couple subsidising a family, so we do not.

What moves the number

Hours and distance, and nothing else. ten hours close to home is £750; twelve hours out to Skye or the west coast is £1,250. There is no peak-season surcharge and no per-mile extra.

What is in it already

Collection from your door and back to it, all mileage, all charging, and the guiding. Food and any entry ticket are yours — every tour page lists exactly which, rather than leaving you to find out at a gate.

For four people, £750 is about £188 each for a whole day with a guide, which is not far off a good coach seat. For two, it is plainly a luxury. Both of those are true and we would rather say so than let you work it out afterwards.

The shape of a day

Early, unhurried, and decided the night before.

Most private days here run eight to twelve hours door to door, and the useful thing to know is where those hours go. It is not a coach itinerary compressed into a car.

The night before: You get a message saying what the weather is doing and what that means for the plan. This is the part that makes a private day different, and it happens before it starts.
Quarter past seven, or earlier: Collection from where you are staying. The early start is not us being keen — it is the entire mechanism. Urquhart Castle at nine in the morning and Urquhart Castle at eleven are two different places.
The first three hours: The busiest thing on the route, done before the crowd arrives. Every day on this site is ordered around that one idea, and it is why the order matters more than the list.
The middle: Lunch somewhere off the main road, and a walk if you want one. This is where a private day stops resembling a tour: if the light is doing something, you stay. Nobody is waiting in a car park.
Late afternoon: The quiet part, usually on a single-track road, usually the bit people remember. Then home, with the last decision of the day — one more stop or straight back — left to you.

Honestly compared

A private car is not always the right answer.

Three ways to see the Highlands in a day. We only sell one of them, so take the following with that in mind — but it is what we would tell a friend.

A coach tour

What it gives you. Cheapest by a long way, and genuinely sociable. If you are on your own and want company, a coach is the better day.

What it costs you. Forty or fifty other people set the pace. You arrive at Urquhart Castle when six other coaches do, and you leave when the driver says.

A hire car

What it gives you. Total freedom and no schedule at all. If you have driven single-track roads before and want to stop for two hours at something nobody told you about, hire a car.

What it costs you. Somebody has to drive. On the east side of Loch Ness or the Bealach na Bà, that person watches passing places and wing mirrors for a day and sees very little of it.

A private car

What it gives you. The pace is yours, nobody drives, and the route bends around the weather on the morning. Four of you split one price.

What it costs you. It costs several times a coach seat. For two people on a tight budget it is a lot of money for one day.

The honest summary: if there are three or four of you, or somebody in the party would rather not spend a day driving single-track roads, a private car is straightforwardly better value than it looks. If there are two of you and the budget is tight, take the coach and put the difference into another night here.

What actually changes

The route changes because the car is yours.

This is the part that is hard to convey in a brochure, because it only shows up on the day. Three concrete things:

Roads a coach cannot use. The east shore of Loch Ness is single track with passing places. The Bealach na Bà has hairpins at one in five. Glen Etive is twelve miles of dead end. No coach goes down any of them, and those are three of the best drives in the country.
The order, not the list. Every operator visits the same handful of places. What a private car buys is arriving at each of them at the right hour — which mostly means the opposite order to the coaches.
The plan surviving the weather. Highland weather does not cancel a private day, it reroutes it. If the top of a pass is in cloud we go round the coast instead. A fixed itinerary has to drive into the cloud and hope.

It is also worth saying what does not change: the Highlands are large and the roads are slow. A private car does not make Skye and Glen Coe possible in the same day, and anybody offering you that is selling you a coach window.

When to come

The season question is mostly a daylight question.

Tours run all year. What changes is how much of the day you can see, and that is arithmetic rather than opinion — daylight at this latitude:

21 December 6 h 36 m

21 March 12 h 06 m

21 June 18 h 00 m

21 October 9 h 42 m

A twelve-hour day is only a daylight day from about late March to late September. An eight-hour one works most of the year. That single fact decides the season advice on every tour page, and it is why the two longest days here are marked April to September while the shorter ones are not marked at all.

Two other things are genuinely seasonal rather than a matter of preference. The Bealach na Bà has snow gates at both ends and closes for weeks at a time — it was shut into mid-January this year. The single-track road down Glen Etive is closed by the council in snow and is not cleared like the roads either side of it. Everything else on this site is open all year.

Winter is the underrated season. Fewer people at every stop, snow on the tops from November, and low light all afternoon rather than only at the end of it.

The aurora in green and red over a dark treeline in the Highlands, a low glow on the hillside beneath it — The other thing about winter: this is what the sky does here on a clear night in February. Not something we can put on an itinerary, and not something you see in June.

Where we collect

From the door, anywhere within about an hour.

We are based at Dundreggan, up Glenmoriston, which puts Fort Augustus15 min, Drumnadrochit30 min, Inverness50 min and Fort William1 h away. Collection is from wherever you are staying — a hotel, a cottage, the station, the airport — at no extra charge, and Invergordon cruise terminal is served for ships in port.

Beyond the hour, ask. It is a guide rather than a boundary, and it changes the shape of the day rather than ruling it out.

See the pick-up map

The days themselves

9 of them, and every one is a starting point.

These are the days asked for most often, not a menu. Each page carries its own price, hours, stops, season and the honest reasons for all four.

See all 9 tours Ask about a date

Private Highland tours: what a day costs, and what it involves.