All Around Scotland

Best things to do in Scotland include hiking, whisky-tasting, and, of course, the Edinburgh Festivals!

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Price: £11, includes linen

Facilities: Fairly well-kept. Large, well-equipped kitchen and friendly, comfortable common area. On-site internet.

Atmosphere: Friendly, chatty, cheerful place. Great staff!

Neighbourhood: Walking distance from train station. Lots of cheap eats about.

Pluses: Clean, spacious, friendly. Staff will help with bookings (hostel, tour) elsewhere in Scotland.

Minuses: There isn't all that much to do in Stirling once you've seen all the William Wallace landmarks and the castle. Sidewalks kind of roll up in the early evening.

Price: £9, includes linen and breakfast

Facilities: Four-person rooms above a local chippy. Each room has en-suite, small fridge, hotplate, and TV! Chippy downstairs serves as common room/pub, with discount for guests and an internet booth.

Atmosphere: Super-friendly! Quiet, quiet, quiet in the rooms... chatty and homey in the small chippy/pub downstairs. But you gotta like fried food.

Neighbourhood: What can I say? Thurso is quiet.

Plusses: Clean, friendly. Staff go out of their way. Rooms are basically semi-private, breakfast is substantial.

Minuses: And you thought Stirling was quiet? Not a hostel for those with ADHD or claustrophobia.

Price: £11 (non-member), includes linen, SYHA/HI card (mandatory for stay)

Facilities: Well-kept but institutional. Rooms are drab, entirely without character or appeal, but clean. Large laundry, huge common area with well-equipped kitchen, giant dining area, lounge with TV and games. Basic supplies can be purchased at reception.

Atmosphere: Cold, impersonal, everyone-keeps-to-himself. Family-friendly.

Neighbourhood: Quite a walk from the downtown area - perhaps 20m? Absolutely nothing in the immediate vicinity (I think it used to be an old army barracks or something).

Pluses: Clean, large. Pretty much the only hostel in town.

Minuses: Atmosphere that could dampen the enthusiasm of a six-year-old at the circus. Location. Officious staff. And you thought Thurso was quiet?

Price: £9, includes private first-class sleeper car!

Facilities: A unique sleeping experience! Hostel is a converted sleeper car, sitting on old train tracks, surrounded by the woods! Even the showers and the kitchen are in the train!

Atmosphere: Very cool concept. Each compartment has a bunk bed on one side, and the train's original seat on the other, making for a private/semi-private little room. Basically, imagine sleeping on a train that isn't moving, but with slightly larger bunks. Very friendly owners live in a nearby converted train station.

Neighbourhood: There isn't one. This is seriously off the beaten path.

Pluses: What, are you kidding? How cool is the concept? (OK, it's clean, it's comfortable, it's fun.)

Minuses: Pretty much accessible only if you have your own means of transportation, and not near any kind of town to speak of.

Price: £8, includes linen

Facilities: 2 small, cosy single-sex dorm rooms with well-kept bathrooms. Well-equipped kitchen. Small common area with TV.

Atmosphere: Basically a small converted barn, feels somewhat like a large, cosy trailer home.

Other: Very friendly owner Peter MacDonald will regale you with stories, and runs a tour service about the island. Tenters can camp in adjacent yard for reduced rate.

Pluses: Small and homey. Beautiful location in southwest (?) part of Skye with stunning shoreline drive. Cyclist-friendly.

Minuses: Far from towns/shopping, etc. Suitable mainly for those with their own means of transportation (bike, car).

Should not really be classified as a hostel, because it's not service-oriented in the way that a hostel is (i.e.: there is not on-site staff, amenities are minimal). It is basically what it claims to be: a bunkhouse. Given that, it's got a good amount of space, a decent location (though not as scenic as other places), good hot showers, and a suitable level of cleanliness. If you are looking for a dry place to spend the night on otherwise sodden Skye (and, as I spent most of my trip camping, the occasional dry night was most welcome), you could do worse.

Setup: one room consists of two multi-person platform bunks: a bottom bunk and a top bunk. These stretch the entire length of the room, accommodating about 6-8 people in each. Privacy is negligible. The other main room is the dining area, which is slightly bigger than the sleeping area. It has long communal tables and benches, and a couple of armchair/couches. Games and books. The kitchen is well equipped and large enough for a number of people to work in it at once.

I would recommend this place only if you're OK with roughing it a bit. It's not a hostel; instead, it's somewhere between a hostel and a camp lodge.

I stayed in Edinburgh Backpackers in the summer of 2002 and thought it was pretty decent.

ROOMS: The rooms were spacious and fairly well kept -- all were co-ed. High ceilings and bright colours add to the "character". Unfortunately, so does the climb up the four storeys or so (no lift). Stone stairwell and walls make it a bit echoey. Good beds (not squeaky or saggy) but bad pillows (tiny, lumpy things that may as well not have been there).

FACILITIES: The showers were quite good! I didn't really use the kitchen much, but from what I saw it was a bit crowded.

PEOPLE: The staff were friendly, but unfortunately, because there isn't a great common room, it's hard just to hang out with people.

NEIGHBOURHOOD: The street it's on (Cockburn) is full of funky, fun stores, good nightlife, but the street noise wasn't bad enough to bother me (then again, I always travel with earplugs anyway). I felt quite secure there (if I recall correctly, there was an entry code system). Next door there is a good cafe where you can get a discount when you show your hostel card. Best of all, it's just below High Street and a 5-m downhill walk to the train station (which unfortunately means a *steep* uphill walk when you first arrive by train).

PRICE: When I stayed, it was £14 - this was during Edinburgh Festival time. (Word of advice: *always* book well in advance if you plan to be in Edinburgh during a festival - which is all of August, for example, and at New Year's/Hogmanay).

Overall, a 7.5/10 - pluses: location, location, location; minuses: common areas, some noise

Belford Hostel sounds intriguing and different when you read about it: it's in a large, converted church. However, the reality is a bit less thrilling. I stayed here in the summer of 1998.

ROOMS: There aren't any, as such. The various sections and alcoves of the church have been sectioned off with 8-foot-high particle-board partitions. Some "cubicles" have 3 or 4 bunk beds in a 12' x 12' space, making for pretty crowded accommodation. Because the "walls" don't reach the gothically high ceilings of the church's interior space, sound carries all over, echoing terribly. Also, it's cold as only a huge, unheated stone structure can be.

FACILITIES: Don't remember much about these, except that there's a small pub in the basement. Good laundry facilities.

PEOPLE: I encountered fairly surly staff, but I guess it'd be unfair to judge everyone by that one night's experience. However, the vastness and coldness of the place seemed to make people awkward and unlikely to socialize warmly.

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Rather out of the way. On the north side of Princes Street, and quite a bit west. Not even *on* my map of central Edinburgh. I remember having to take the bus to get to the centre of town, but that might just have been either because I was lazy or because I was carrying my pack. Neighbourhood is nice and quiet, though.

PRICE: I don't remember exactly what I paid, but I know that we got bilked because we hadn't booked in advance and it was the Festival and everywhere was booked up.

Overall, a 6.5/10 - pluses: clean, you can say you lived in a church; minuses: uncomfortable atmosphere, far from the action

ROOMS: The single-sex rooms were *huge* (mine housed 16 people), bright, well-kept, and humorously named. Fifteen-foot ceilings, and all rooms appear to have a view of some kind: to the north, the Castle, to the south, trees and the Old Town. The beds were decent, but the mattresses were made of that bumpy foam that's meant to be a mattress-cover, which was kind of odd, rather hard, but not entirely uncomfortable.

FACILITIES: Very good bathroom facilities: spacious, enough to go around, with excellent spacious shower stalls with plenty of hot water. Two large, well-equipped kitchens. Internet room. Staff will do laundry for you (for a charge).

PEOPLE: Friendly staff, but you have to be willing to make the effort. There are lots of long-term residents, apparently, who can be clannish. However, an excellent lounge with big-screen TV and pool table, and a dining room with a large table make it easy to socialize.

NEIGHBOURHOOD: The biggest selling point! You don't get locations any better than this, especially for the Festival. Right around the corner from the top of the Royal Mile and just below the southern walls of the Castle, it's within easy walking distance of both Old and New towns. However, it's not noisy - the worst noise was from the Military Tattoo in the Castle Esplanade each night.

PRICE: £13.50 during Festival time - a bargain!

Overall, a 9/10 - pluses: decor, location, location, location; minuses: if you don't like large dorm rooms, this is probably not your place.