Our final port in Scotland was the small fishing village of Ullapool. The town sets on the shores of Loch Broom on the northwest coast of Scotland and has a population of 1,500 people.
This was the one stop where we didn’t really have anything planned since we would only be docked from 7:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. To make things even more difficult, Ullapool was a tender port so we really limited on time. All that considered, we decided to signup for the included city highlights tour that Viking offers.
Viking prides themselves on being all-inclusive and offers one free excursion in each port. That free tour is either a walking tour around the city or a “luxury motor coach” tour with a guide who shares the history of the area and points out some key highlights. Viking does offer other tours at each port but those come at a cost and are usually a bus ride to a site where you might have a couple hours to tour the area.
As you can tell by the previous ports we have visited on this cruise we rarely ever take the ship excursions and instead opt for a local private tour guide who will shape our day based on what we want to see and do. We’ve had great luck with private excursions and feel like we get a lot more value out of it versus a ship tour where we’d typically be stuck on a bus with 30-40 people who dictate the pace of the tour. Those tours are also limited to the general sites in the area since the big busses can’t get off the beaten path to see some sites that may be harder to get to. And the best part is 99.9% of the time the guides are locals who’ve spent their entire lives in the area. They know the culture and history and will take us to their favorite restaurants or pubs for lunch or point out a place to check out on our own. I’d recommend taking the time and doing a little research to find a local guide rather than ship excursion 100 times over.
Some may worry about missing the ship since the ship excursions are guaranteed to get you back to the ship on time, but every guide we’ve used has always gotten us back to the pier at least 30-60 minutes prior to all aboard time, if not sooner. These guides make their living by providing tours and wouldn’t get the recommendations they do or wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t get their guests back to the ship in time.
As for our tour in Ullapool, our tour consisted of a one-hour narrated tour around a couple blocks in the town. There was about 30 people in our group and guide stopped at a few places to share a little bit of history about the area. At the end of the tour we were able to stop a local restaurant for some tea and fudge. Since we were done by 9:15 we tried to jump on a local RIB boat tour that would take us out into the harbor looking for a wildlife but the only had space for one of us so we passed. Instead, we popped in a few local shops. We then sat along the pier and I put the drone in the air to try and get some shots of the ship and the scenic shorelines. D got me a drone for Father’s Day and this was the first trip I got to take it on. Here’s a few highlights from Ullapool. Bear in mind I’m a novice at this and still learning what I’m doing.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the ship taking advantage of the free spa they have. You may recall we did a Nordic sauna treatment while were in Oslo. The ship has a sauna, steam room, cold plunge and a snow room so we took what we learned in Oslo and put it into practice at the spa. It was a great way to reset the body after five straight days of going hard.
Tomorrow we will be stopping in Belfast to visit Giants Causeway and see a few Game of Thrones sites. Thanks as always for following along.
3x5 Adventures 
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