Glen Scotia – A Distillery Tour and a Seafood Lunch
A few hours.
The route
Glen Scotia is one of Campbeltown's three working distilleries, in long white buildings on High Street.
Its guides call the town the Victorian whisky capital of the world. An hour's tour takes you round the working distillery with one of its staff and finishes with a dram of its Double Cask single malt. Lunch is seafood at the Red Herring on Main Street.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
Book the Whisky Distillery Tour on Glen Scotia's website for 11am, Monday to Friday: it takes an hour, costs £15 a head plus a booking fee at the time of writing, and ends with a dram, so the driver should pass theirs on.
Book a table at The Red Herring for about 12.15pm on 07803 166003: it's open every day from noon to 10pm, and booking is recommended.
The day
Campbeltown
A late-morning hour among the stills and the casks, a dram to finish, and a short walk down through the town for a seafood lunch.
About three hoursAbout 0.5 miles on foot
Glen Scotia Distillery
An attraction
Glen Scotia is at 12 High Street, with its name painted large on the white gable. There's free parking on Hall Street, outside the Picture House, and the distillery is a walk up through the town from there. Book the Whisky Distillery Tour on its website before you go: it runs Monday to Friday at 11am or 2pm, takes an hour and costs £15 a head plus a booking fee at the time of writing. One of the staff takes you round the working distillery, and it finishes with a dram of the Double Cask single malt, so whoever is driving should pass theirs to a passenger. Tell the distillery when you book if you have any access needs, and ask about children. The shop is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm.
12 min on foot
The Red Herring
Lunch
Lunch is about 12 minutes' walk back down through the town, at the Red Herring on Main Street, a couple of minutes from the car on Hall Street. It's open every day from noon to 10pm, and the menu is mostly seafood, from freshly landed haddock and Shetland mussels to Loch Fyne langoustines and hand-dived scallops. Booking is recommended: ring 07803 166003. If it's full, the Ardshiel Hotel's Garden Restaurant on Kilkerran Road is open daily, with a children's menu and high chairs; ring 01586 552133.
If it rains
The tour and the lunch are both under a roof; only the walks through the town are out in the weather.
Photographs by Frank Hug and Red herring seafood restaurant via Google