Loch Ness and Glencoe, twelve hours of mountain road without touching a steering wheel.

Loch Ness lies in the Great Glen, the great fault that cuts diagonally across the Highlands, more than three hours' drive from Edinburgh. There and back in a day is almost 580 kilometres. You can do it in a hire car, but it means driving twelve hours on the left, on mountain roads, and seeing hardly anything because you're watching the road. The alternative almost everyone uses is an organised tour: a guide who drives, tells you the story of the landscape and stops where it's worth it. This plan takes that as the backbone of the day and adds what's missing: what to expect at each stop and where to eat when you get back.

Before sunrise

7:45 · St Andrew Square bus station. The Rabbie's minibus picks up at gates J and K, inside the station, in the New Town. Arrive a quarter of an hour early. There are 16 seats at most, so the group is small and the guide can stop in lay-bys where a coach won't fit. From the station you head north-west, leave Stirling Castle behind on its rock and enter the Highlands through the Trossachs, with a stop for coffee.

Rannoch Moor and Glencoe

Mid-morning you cross Rannoch Moor, a plateau of peat, lochs and nothing else, one of the most sparsely populated areas of Great Britain. Then the road drops down to Glencoe: a narrow valley between mountains whose slopes are streaked by torrents, with a photo stop. In low mist it changes completely. Here the guide usually tells the story of the 1692 massacre, when soldiers lodged by the MacDonalds killed their hosts.

You carry on beneath Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain, and enter the Great Glen heading north.

By Loch Ness

The long stop is at Fort Augustus, a village at the southern end of the loch, around the locks of the Caledonian Canal. There's time for lunch in the village and, if you like, for the 50-minute cruise on the loch, paid separately. The loch is long, narrow, very deep and its water dark from the peat; the monster, as you know, doesn't show up in photos. If you prefer Urquhart Castle, the most photographed ruins on the shore, the Timberbush Tours trip stops there instead of Fort Augustus, with boat and castle packages; it leaves at 8:00 from Castle Terrace and returns at around 20:30. It costs the same.

The return, with a stop or two to stretch your legs, gets you back to Edinburgh at around 20:00; Timberbush makes its last stop in Pitlochry, a Victorian town on the banks of the Tummel.

Dinner five minutes away

From the bus station to Rose Street is a five-minute walk. The Abbotsford is a 1902 pub with a large mahogany bar in the middle and Scottish food until 21:30: haggis, neeps and tatties, steak and ale pie or fish and chips. Upstairs there's a dining room where children can eat at any time. If you come back craving seafood, the tram drops you in Leith next to Fishers in Leith, also serving food until 21:30.