Customer Reviews

Scotland: The Rough Guide, Second Edition (Scotland, 2nd ed)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this guide book along with several others to plan a trip to Scotland. Everything I wanted to know was in this book. The phone listings, bed and breakfasts, etc. were all as described. You know how some guidebooks discuss things or list restaurants, hotels, etc. that are no longer around, or aren't as described in the book? Well this wasn't one of them. It became an invaluable companion on my trip. The history of any area I wanted was basically in the book. The recommendations were fairly accurate, and the maps most useful. This is a guidebook for real people--those of us who dream of a trip to Scotland, but perhaps don't have a lot of money to spend on fancy hotels, rental cars, etc.

Circumstances permitted us only a one-week visit to Scotland, and this book helped us make every day full and enjoyable. It led us to out-of-the-way places we never would have found on our own. Its straightforward descriptions made it easy to choose among several options in any area that we traveled through.

Thus we found Innerperfray Library with its librarian, Mr. Powell, and his entertaining personal tour, walks in the woods of Glen Coe and Loch Leven, the slate quarry at Ballachulish, the island of Inchmahome and the ruins of Inchmahome Abbey, a cruise in a small boat along unspoiled Loch Shiel, Doune Castle (where an anxious crew was shooting a TV commercial), and dinner with excellent food in pleasant surroundings - and way off the beaten track - at An Crann, in Balavie, near Fort William.

The book's listings of accommodations, however, seem more for the hardy. We found reasonably priced and comfortable hotels through local tourist offices, for which the book also provides contact information.

In travelling through Scotland this summer, I found this book invaluable in pointing out important places to visit. Particularly impressive was the way it would imply avoiding certain sections and areas of the country, but never denigrating anything. It is a thorough guide for the whole country, and I found it's analysis interesting and thought provoking. It also makes a good read when you are not even travelling. This is an outstanding book, without question.

This was my fourth Rough Guide, and was perhaps the best of them all. It contains an incredible amount of detail on all sorts of historical monuments, large and small. This guide helped make my trip to Scotland perhaps the best of my vacations. Highly recommended.

This is a terrific book, written well (in the spirit of the intelligent Harvard "Let's Go..." books - the author is clearly in love with Scotland but is also willing to share it's flaws and stay-away-froms. One of the best travel books I've seen in a long, long time.

This guide took two first time travelers through the country, by car and rail without any hangups at all! The b&b's were all that were promised,the shops exactly as described, and even tho Brittish food is not exactly a gormet delight, we ate with the locals in the pubs mentioned and thouroughly enjoyed every one. We're going to Germany next year and have only ordered the guide to Germany, with no hesitation, and are expecting the same wonderful journey thanks to the Rough guide!

Seems Every Blessed Village in Scotland is covered, with what to see there. Readable, well organized, some pics, slightly ok maps, history, culture (including guide to Gaelic). The phone numbers listed for car rental, rail, air, bus, ferries alone is immense. Untouchable.

While this guide does have loads of information, I did not find the description of the accomodations to be particularly accurate. And after a day of driving and/or sightseeing, I do appreciate comfort and expect it if it's been foretold.

In preparation for a recent trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, I looked for a good travel guide, and this to me looked as good as anything out there. I took a summer course at the University of Edinburgh exactly 30 years ago, and for various reasons I wanted to revisit the old stomping grounds (I had toured other parts of scotland as a college student as well). I've waited until coming back from my trip to post a review on this book.

"The Rough Guide to Scotland" (671 pages) starts off with a 60 page "basics" section, common to many of these travel guides. Most useful to me were the "getting around" recommendations. I had very carefully read the 75 page section on Edinburgh, for obvious reasons, and I can only confirm and reconfirm that this travel guide is exactly on point on most of what I read and then experienced in Edinburgh. Curiosity was such that I also read some of the other sections (for example on Isle of Skye, Inverness and Aberdeen) which I had visited many years ago, and which seem also very on point, I hope to have an opportunity to go there again.

Visiting Edinburgh in August is like no other experience, with the Edinburgh Festival, the Fringe Festival and the Royal Military Tattoo all taking place, among many other delights. Amazingly, the weather never got above 60 degrees or so, and this is in the middle of summer! Meanwhile, if you are preparing for a trip to Scotland, by all means check out this book, it is as good as you'll ever need.

I took 3 books to Scotland -- Rough Guide, Frommer's, Fodor's (all 2004) and this was clearly the best. It was bigger and had more detail than the other's which was very useful when travelling 2200 miles around the country and wondering what there was to do or where to eat while in transit between planned stops. Rough Guide had lots of interesting things to do and places to visit in areas where the other two books had nothing. Fodor's and Frommer's tended to be more opinionated which was sometimes useful and I did find a good accommodation from Fodor's one night, but if I was only to take one book, it was clearly Rough Guide.