Castle Tours 2026/2027 | Castles, Palaces & Abbeys

Shaped by power and faith

Our castle, palace and abbey tours explore buildings that shaped how people ruled, worshipped and lived. In western Scotland you follow a landscape shaped by power, faith and imagination, its ancient fortresses and sacred medieval ruins strung along a dramatic coastline. In the east you trace Mary, Queen of Scots through Linlithgow, Falkland and Loch Leven, one a birthplace, one a pleasure palace and one a prison. In Northumberland you stand beneath Bamburgh above the North Sea, walk the state rooms of Alnwick, known as the Windsor of the North, and cross to Lindisfarne, where the raid on its monastery in AD 793 is widely regarded as marking the beginning of the Viking Age in Britain.

You travel with expert Guide Lecturers and historians who know these buildings, the families who raised them and the arguments they were built to win, and love sharing their stories.

Castles, palaces & abbey tours: your questions answered

Both, often on the same site. Royal palaces are frequently intact and furnished; castles range from complete and lived-in to bare curtain walls, and the abbeys were mostly unroofed at the Reformation and left as shells. The mix is part of the interest, since a ruin shows you the structure a finished building hides.

Expert Guide Lecturers and historians who know these periods and buildings. A castle makes far more sense once someone has explained what it was defending against, why it sits exactly there and what changed when gunpowder arrived.

Mostly medieval, with the palaces running later into the Renaissance and the abbeys beginning earlier still. Many have been rebuilt several times over, so a single site can carry Norman foundations, later medieval walls and Victorian restoration all at once.

Yes; the two often go hand in hand. Abbeys were among the wealthiest and most powerful institutions in medieval Britain, which is exactly why the Reformation hit them so hard, and their ruin is a political story as much as a religious one.

More than most collections. Castles were built on high ground and defended by difficult approaches, spiral stairs are narrow and uneven, and abbey sites are open ground in all weathers. Each itinerary carries an activity level of light, moderate or active so you know what to expect before you book.

Yes, many guests travel solo. Shared interest naturally leads to easy conversation, and friendships formed on tour often outlast it.

Spring through autumn for the fullest opening hours and the best weather for exposed sites. Ruined castles and abbeys are often at their most striking in low winter light, when the crowds have gone, and the structure is easier to read.