The best pubs in Scotland – old inns, real fires and bars worth travelling for

Whether you love real ale, fancy a whisky by the fire or a proper Sunday roast after a walk, these are the best pubs in Scotland.

From a thatched inn in Ayr that Burns sent Tam o’ Shanter off from, to a bar on the pier at Stromness, to an inn under Ben Klibreck that is owned by the Scottish Episcopal Church, use the map to pick a region, or filter by what kind of pub you are after.

This guide was last checked in October 2026.

The best pubs in Scotland – my favourites

If you only have time for a handful, start with these – they’re the ones I go back to.

• The Bow Bar and Kay’s Bar, Edinburgh – eight cask ales through tall founts at the Bow, a coal fire and a lunchtime pie at Kay’s. The two best beer pubs in the capital.

• The Horseshoe Bar and the Pot Still, Glasgow – the 104-foot bar and the cheapest three-course lunch in the city, then seven hundred whiskies and a hot pie round the corner.

• The Taybank, Dunkeld and the Birnam Inn, Birnam – riverside garden and live music at the Taybank and then cross the river to the Birnam inn, a recently re-opened pub in the grounds of the big Birnam Hotel.

• Steam Packet Inn, Isle of Whithorn – CAMRA’s Scotland Pub of the Year 2026, a harbourside pub with its own brewery, scallops from the boats outside and six rooms over the water.

• Hillend Tavern, Dalgety Bay – CAMRA’s regional Pub of the Year for Scotland and Northern Ireland in 2023 and one of the top seventeen pubs in the UK in 2024, a proper village local where the regulars will pick your pint for you.

• Kirkstyle Inn, Dunning – a 1760 village inn with its own house ale, an open fire and rooms, fifteen minutes from Perth.

• The Clachaig Inn, Glencoe – four changing Scottish cask ales in the Boots Bar and a room full of people just down off the hill.

• The Old Forge, Inverie, Knoydart – the remotest pub on the mainland, community-owned, venison off the hill and langoustines out of the loch. You arrive by boat or on foot.

• Stein Inn, Waternish – Skye’s oldest inn, a fire, and a hundred and twenty-five malts. Rooms upstairs so you don’t need to leave.

The best pubs in Edinburgh

Edinburgh has more nationally important pub interiors than any other city in Scotland, and most of them are within twenty minutes of each other on foot.

Read more – my guide to the best pubs and bars in Edinburgh

The Old Town

The Bow Bar at the foot of Victoria Street has only been a pub since the 1960s, but it was built as a faithful copy of a one-roomed Scottish alehouse and done so well that CAMRA class it an outstanding restoration. Eight cask ales come through tall founts rather than handpumps and the gantry holds over 400 malts, including the bar’s own single-cask bottlings.

Sandy Bell’s on Forrest Road is a folk pub, with free sessions every evening from nine and some afternoons too. You can bring an instrument and join in.

The cellars of the White Hart Inn in the Grassmarket date from 1516 and the building above from around 1740, which makes it the oldest surviving public house in the city.

The Jolly Judge is down a close off the Lawnmarket, two minutes from the castle esplanade, a single low-ceilinged room in a building of the 1600s with a painted ceiling and a log fire.

The Halfway House is down a flight of steps in Fleshmarket Close and seats about twenty at a push, with four changing handpumps and hot pies all day.

The Captain’s Bar on South College Street is where to go for folk – unamplified sessions most afternoons and evenings, run by local players, and you can bring an instrument.

Leslie’s Bar on Ratcliffe Terrace is one of the finest rooms in the city and CAMRA give it three stars. A mahogany island counter splits it in two, with low numbered service windows that let the lounge order through while keeping its distance from the public bar.

The New Town

The Cafe Royal has an oval island bar with ornate brass fittings and Doulton tiled murals of great inventors, almost all of it from 1900. Category A listed, and one of the finest Victorian interiors anywhere in Scotland.

The Abbotsford on Rose Street was built in 1902 for Charles Jenner of the department store, reportedly so his staff could spend their wages nearby. The island servery carries a carved mahogany gantry standing on the counter rather than above it, and it is one of very few Edinburgh pubs still pouring cask through tall founts.

The Kenilworth, a few doors along, has a large island bar with a carved mahogany gantry at its centre and walls two-thirds tiled in blue and white Minton with stained glass above.

The Oxford Bar on Young Street is Inspector Rebus’s local and one of the least altered pubs in the city, a corridor with a tiny stand-up bar through an archway and a side sitting room with a 1950s brick fireplace.

Kay’s Bar on Jamaica Street is a former coach house that became the premises of John Kay & Sons, wine merchants, and has been a pub since 1975.

The Barony Bar on Broughton Street has an 1899 scheme by John Forrester almost entirely intact, with a tiled dado of rural Scottish scenes and two tiled fireplaces with mirrored overmantels. The Stockbridge Tap takes its beer more seriously than almost anywhere in the city, with six changing casks.

The Guildford Arms off West Register Street opened in 1896, with a very high ceiling, ornate plasterwork, friezes and arched windows, five regular casks and five changing, and beer festivals in spring and autumn.

Upstairs above the Cafe Royal, the Voodoo Rooms have a three-star interior and run as a cocktail bar and music venue rather than a pub, with live music and cabaret through the week.

Mathers West End on Queensferry Street is a single high-ceilinged room fitted into a former bank in the early 1900s and barely touched since, with the original gantry and a wall of old Wm Younger mirrors. Three stars, and mostly standing.

The Cumberland Bar has eight cask taps, an open fire and a big side garden in a Georgian terrace.

Leith

The plaque outside Henry Hall’s Carriers Quarters on Bernard Street is Leith’s oldest unaltered public house. The Malt and Hops on the Shore has seven changing beers and a real fire to drink it by.

The Shore next door occupies two rooms of an 1802 tenement with a bar largely unchanged since 1884, a wooden gantry on barley-twist columns and open fires. The kitchen is seafood and game, and there are around a hundred Scotch malts.

The King’s Wark on the Shore is the ground floor of an early 18th-century corner tenement with a doorpiece dated 1711 and a real fire, and the kitchen is the main business: Scottish seafood, shellfish and game, served at table. Closed Thursdays.

Teuchters Landing is the old waiting room for the Leith to Aberdeen steamboat ferry, with a beer garden and a floating pontoon, four casks and a whisky list long enough to be printed.

Tollcross, Morningside and Duddingston

Bennets Bar beside the King’s Theatre was designed in 1891 and refitted in 1906, and is one of eleven Edinburgh pubs CAMRA rate three stars, its top grade for a historic interior.

The Canny Man’s in Morningside, formerly the Volunteer Arms, has been run by the Kerr family for over a century and a half, with small rooms and alcoves crowded with pictures, instruments and trophies, reputedly the largest whisky selection of any bar in the city, and a menu built around Danish smorrebrod.

The Sheep Heid Inn at Duddingston is reputedly licensed since 1360, though the building is largely 19th century. The skittle alley behind it dates from 1880 and is said to be the last of its kind in Scotland.

Cloisters on Brougham Street is the former All Saints parsonage and keeps ten changing casks, which is as many as anywhere in the city, with a wide malt range beside them.

The Blue Blazer below the castle has five handpumps, each beer on a handwritten label and a blue blazer mosaic of 1889 in the doorway.

The west end

The Roseburn Bar at the foot of Roseburn Terrace is one of the least altered rooms in the city. Two handpumps with Pentland IPA and Jarl, a real fire, live music on Friday and Saturday, and the small Fly Half bar keeps its etched Jug Bar door panel from the days when women were served through a hatch.

The Athletic Arms on Angle Park Terrace is known to everyone as the Diggers, after the gravediggers from the two cemeteries it stands between. Seven or eight hundred malts on the gantry, poured in 35ml measures, and Benromach Whisky Bar of the Year at the 2025 Scottish Bar and Pub Awards.

Ryrie’s at Haymarket was remodelled in 1906 for Ryrie and Company, whisky merchants, and the gantry is unaltered with a clock at the centre of the cornice. Two stars. Landlord and Jarl are on all the time with four changing beers beside them, the old water taps are still on the bar, and a screen above it shows the Haymarket departures.

The best pubs in Glasgow

The bar counter at the Horseshoe Bar on Drury Street runs about 104 feet around its outer edge, which makes it the longest in Scotland and the second longest in Britain.

The Pot Still on Hope Street has over a thousand whiskies on a gantry that climbs the back wall, and it is the first place anyone in Glasgow sends you to try whisky.

The Steps Bar on Glassford Street is one of only two Art Deco pubs left in the city. The Old Toll Bar on Paisley Road West is one of eight Glasgow pubs CAMRA rate three stars, a Victorian palace pub of 1892 with four huge Forest & Son mirrors and a panelled ceiling. Neither keeps cask ale, so go for the interiors.

The Laurieston Bar in Tradeston has not changed since the 1960s: a horseshoe bar, small Formica-topped tables, and walls covered in old photographs and mirrors.

The Scotia Bar was first licensed in 1815 and has a folk tradition that has never really stopped, and the Bon Accord at Charing Cross has eight handpumps and an extensive malt collection.

In the West End, the Three Judges at Partick Cross has nine changing handpumps. The Doublet in Woodlands opened in 1962 and its mock Tudor interior is a rare survivor of its period. The Ben Nevis Bar in Finnieston has a large malt selection on sloping shelves and folk music three nights a week.

South of the river, Heraghty’s on Pollokshaws Road has been a bar since 1890 and in the same family since 1973, with a carved gantry, a 1930s counter with Art Deco glass and over a hundred malts.

The best pubs in the Lothians and the Borders

The Volunteer Arms in Musselburgh, known to everyone as Staggs, was built in 1858 and has been in the same family for more than 150 years.

The Tweeddale Arms faces the village green at Gifford, with a small locals’ bar, a wood-burning stove and thirteen rooms.

In Midlothian, the Dean Tavern at Newtongrange is one of only five surviving Gothenburg pubs in Scotland, owned by a trust that puts the profits back into the village.

Peebles has been called the best cask beer town in the Borders – head to The Bridge Inn or The Crown Hotel. In Kelso, Rutherfords is Scotland’s first micropub and Cobbles across the square is a gastropub given over to Tempest.

The Black Bull at Lauder is a late 18th-century coaching inn. The Traquair Arms at Innerleithen has two fires, one in the lounge and a log burner in the flagstoned sports bar for walkers and anglers.

Burts Hotel on the square at Melrose has twenty rooms and a real fire, and the Border Hotel at Kirk Yetholm is where the Pennine Way finishes, which it has been for generations.

The best pubs in Falkirk, Lanarkshire and West Lothian

The Bull Inn on New Street in Paisley was rebuilt in 1901 by the local architect W.D. McLennan and is almost entirely intact. Category A listed, and one of a handful of interiors CAMRA rate three stars.

The Four Marys in Linlithgow dates from around 1500 near the palace where Mary, Queen of Scots was born, named for her four ladies-in-waiting.

Biggar’s Crown Inn closed in October 2026 and went up for lease, which leaves the Elphinstone on the High Street, an 18th-century coaching inn with eleven rooms, a cast iron fire and two handpumps.

Weavers in Strathaven has been Lanarkshire Pub of the Year many times over, including a long unbroken recent run, with four changing beers. The Clydesdale Inn at Lanark is a late 18th-century coaching inn.

Alloa was one of the great brewing towns and at the Mansfield Arms at Sauchie the Gibson family brew Devon Ales on the premises. The Inn at Muckhart, a single-storey coaching inn below the Ochils, pours their beers.

The Ashton in Helensburgh has three permanent cask lines. The Wheatsheaf is Falkirk’s oldest pub, down a vennel off the High Street, and the Corbie Inn at Bo’ness is the pub for the steam railway and the Hippodrome, Scotland’s oldest purpose-built cinema.

Habbies at Kilbarchan is the best village pub in Renfrewshire outside Paisley, a hundred metres from the National Trust’s Weaver’s Cottage in a conservation village.

The St Andrews Bar in Coatbridge has a 1960s interior that has survived almost untouched and the Royal Arms in Tillicoultry has a Victorian fireplace with a log burner in it and three handpumps of English cask, unusual this far north.

The best pubs in Fife

The Feuars Arms in Kirkcaldy is a flour mill converted in 1859 and remodelled in 1902, and one of only a handful of pub interiors in Scotland CAMRA rate three stars. The gents has marble urinals and a glass-panelled Doulton cistern.

The Hillend Tavern at Dalgety Bay, known locally as the Tav, is a multi-award winning pub. Coal fires and a dog bar with free water and treats, five minutes from the station.

In the East Neuk, the Dreel Tavern at Anstruther has a beer garden over the burn that divides Anstruther Wester from Easter. The Ship Inn at Elie has its own cricket team that plays on the sand at low tide.

The Kinneuchar Inn at Kilconquhar is an inspectors’ favourite in the Michelin guide.

The Red Lion at Culross is community owned and brews its own beer.

The Criterion in St Andrews has been family run since 1874, with over 160 whiskies and the house Cri Pie served to closing. The Commercial Inn in Dunfermline runs five changing casks.

The best pubs in Dundee and Angus

The Speedwell Bar on Perth Road, known to everyone in Dundee as Mennie’s, is the finest Edwardian pub interior in Scotland.

Frews Bar on Strathmartine Road is the city’s other three-star interior, trading since 1915, with timber panelling, a bevelled-mirror gantry and a large inglenook fireplace.

The Bank Bar on Union Street is the best cask pub in the centre on current form, Dundee Pub of the Year in both 2025 and 2026, in a former banking hall five minutes from the station.

The Fisherman’s Tavern at Broughty Ferry is three fishermen’s cottages knocked together.

Arbroath has the Lochlands Bar, whose 1963 lounge is little changed and whose ceilidh runs every Thursday evening. Brechin has the Brechin Arms, with a Victorian gantry and one handpump. The Airlie Arms at Kirriemuir was Angus Pub of the Year in 2025.

The Glen Clova Hotel sits near the head of its glen with no phone signal and very faint wi-fi. The Climber’s Bar has two handpumps and a large log-fired stove, and the accommodation runs from rooms to self-catering lodges.

The best pubs in Perthshire

The Ericht Alehouse in Blairgowrie is the best cask-ale house in the county, with six changing beers in lined glasses and real cider. The Stormont Arms along the road is a drinkers’ pub little altered since the 1950s.

There has been an Old Ship Inn on its site in Perth since at least 1665 and the name has never changed, though the building is late Victorian. You go in off the medieval Skinnergate.

The Taybank at Dunkeld was once a temperance hotel, and is now a folk institution, with a big painting of the fiddler Niel Gow over the bar and sessions on Wednesdays and Thursdays. There is a riverside beer garden across the road and a wood-fired sauna on the bank of the Tay through the winter.

The Birnam Hotel is shut for a major renovation but the pub beside it is open. Seasonal pies, a sun-trap lawn and five minutes from Dunkeld and Birnam station. Friday to Sunday only.

The Moulin Inn opened in 1695 on the village square above Pitlochry, with two log fires and the path up Ben Vrackie starting at the door. The Moulin Brewery works out of the old coach house behind and supplies all four cask ales. Down in the town, the Old Mill Inn is a 19th-century mill with the water wheel still turning and live music every Friday and Saturday.

The Auld Smiddy on Atholl Road was Pitlochry’s blacksmith’s forge in the early 1900s and is now a bar and restaurant with log fires in winter and a firepit outside in summer.

The Meikleour Arms was built in 1820 as a coaching inn and is still owned by the estate, with eleven rooms, a log fire in an Adam-style fireplace and salmon fishing on the estate’s own stretch of the Tay. The great beech hedge planted in 1745 is just up the road.

The Kirkstyle Inn at Dunning dates from 1760 and stands in the shadow of the Norman steeple of St Serf’s, which houses the Pictish Dupplin Cross. The Muirs Inn at Kinross is a listed coaching inn with an ornate gantry and three original pub mirrors, and the Cherrybank on the western edge of Perth is a drovers’ inn of 1761.

The best pubs in Stirling, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs

The Settle Inn was built in 1733 on the hill up to the castle and is the oldest pub in Stirling, with a real fire and old curling stones in the hearth. The Portcullis a little further up was the town’s grammar school of 1788 and stands beside the castle esplanade.

Nicky Tam’s on Baker Street dates from 1718 and was first owned by Laird Graigengelt, whose family crest is still above the doors. The Curly Coo on Barnton Street is given over almost entirely to malt whisky, with the cabinets, shelves and most of the back bar carrying it.

The Drovers Inn at Inverarnan is an 18th-century droving inn at the head of Loch Lomond, shown on a map of 1776, full of taxidermy and on the West Highland Way.

The Lade Inn at Kilmahog has three house beers brewed to its own recipes, and the real ale shop next door is said to hold the largest selection of bottled ales in the country. The Allanwater Brewhouse at Bridge of Allan brews them, and is the only working brewpub around Stirling.

The Falls of Dochart Inn stands right at the bridge over the falls at Killin, with a stone-tiled floor and a large open fireplace.

The Globe Inn in Dumfries was Robert Burns’s favourite pub from 1791 and is still called the Burns Howff. His chair stands in the front room and two upstairs windowpanes carry etchings authenticated as his.

The Blue Bell Inn at Annan is a coaching inn of 1770 whose interior dates mostly from 1917, when the government’s Gretna State Management Scheme refitted it to curb the drinking of munitions workers.

The Crown Hotel at Portpatrick is a Category C listed building of 1745 on the harbour, looking across to Ireland on a clear day.

The Steam Packet at the Isle of Whithorn is the only pub in the village and the brewery tap for the Scoular family’s Five Kingdoms, with up to seven of their beers plus a rotating guest.

Burns wrote the Selkirk Grace at the Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright in 1794. The Masonic Arms at Gatehouse of Fleet was built by the local Masons in 1785 and has a beamed bar, a real fire and a Sunday carvery worth booking for.

For beer, the Cavens Arms in Dumfries runs eight casks, which is the biggest range in the south west, and the Sulwath Brewery tap room in Castle Douglas has six. The Farmers Arms at Thornhill is the current Dumfriesshire Pub of the Year.

The best pubs in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray

The Grill on Union Street opened in 1870 as a dining room and has been a pub since 1926. Ma Cameron’s on Little Belmont Street is one of the oldest pubs in the city, with a wood-panelled snug of bare bench seating and two 1920s bentwood chairs. The Prince of Wales down a lane off Union Street has one of the longest counters in Aberdeen and eight handpumps.

The St Machar Bar in Old Aberdeen is an 18th-century pub beside King’s College and the Queen Vic on Rosemount Place is a repeat branch Pub of the Year with one of the better cask ranges in the city.

The Marine at Stonehaven is six degrees north’s only pub, and was Scottish CAMRA Pub of the Year in 2008. The Shore Inn sits right on Portsoy harbour and played the Hotel Lalanne in Peaky Blinders. The Kimberley Inn at Findhorn calls itself Moray’s seafood pub and has an open log fire and a snug looking across the firth.

Inland, the Redgarth at Oldmeldrum has four rotating casks and six large en suite rooms, and the Cock & Bull at Balmedie has been Scottish Gastropub of the Year three times.

The Flying Stag is the public bar of the Fife Arms in Braemar, where hundreds of antlers are arranged around a mounted stag that appears to be flying out from behind the counter. Bertie’s Bar in the same hotel holds over 500 whiskies.

Speyside

The Quaich Bar at the Craigellachie Hotel is an upstairs wood-panelled room holding somewhere between 700 and 1,000 single malts, which makes it the largest collection in Speyside and one of the largest anywhere.

The Highlander Inn across the road has over 200 malts plus one of the largest Japanese whisky collections outside south-east Asia.

The Mash Tun at Aberlour was built in 1896 beside the Spey and holds 56 Glenfarclas Family Cask vintages running from 1952 to 2010, poured by the dram. The Still at the Dowans up the hill has a 500-bottle collection, and the Station Hotel at Rothes has over 500 with a spirit safe made a few streets away by Forsyths.

The Fiddichside Inn at Craigellachie is a two-room bar on the bank of the Fiddich.

The best pubs in the Cairngorms and Strathspey

The Old Bridge Inn at Aviemore was a riverside cottage converted in 1982 and has four changing cask handpumps, nearly always Scottish, with folk sessions and ticketed gigs.

The Cairn Hotel at Carrbridge is the one Good Beer Guide cask pub left in Strathspey outside Aviemore.

The best pubs in Inverness, Loch Ness and the Black Isle

Hootananny on Church Street in Inverness has live traditional music every single night, with sessions running to midnight in the main bar, the downstairs music starting at half nine and Mad Hatters upstairs going on until two or three, and a ceilidh on Saturday afternoons. Gellions on Bridge Street was established in 1841 and is the oldest pub in the city.

For beer, the Castle Tavern opposite the castle entrance has five changing casks and the Clachnaharry Inn is a 17th-century coaching inn beside the Caledonian Canal with a garden looking over the Beauly Firth to Ben Wyvis.

On the Black Isle, the Plough Inn at Rosemarkie was rebuilt in 1907 and the front bar has survived almost untouched.

The Anderson at Fortrose has been in the Good Beer Guide every year since 2005, with a separate whisky bar holding more than 200 bottles and a serious Belgian list.

The Lock Inn at Fort Augustus sits beside the flight of locks and was the village post office until about 1983. The Dores Inn on the shore of Loch Ness is closed for a long restoration under Wildland, with plans lodged for a bakery, a cafe, a jetty and a sauna by the forest.

The best pubs in Lochaber and on the Road to the Isles

The Old Forge at Inverie is the remotest pub on mainland Britain and has been community owned since 2022, after nine local volunteers spent fourteen months taking the bid forward.

The Clachaig Inn is a hillwalkers pub, with the stone-floored Boots Bar where the climbers go, the Snug and the Bidean Lounge. Four changing casks, wood-burning stoves everywhere, as many as 400 whiskies on the top shelf and twenty-three bedrooms.

The Ben Nevis Inn at Achintee is a stone cow barn over two hundred years old, converted in 2001, standing right at the start of the Ben Nevis path.

The Glenuig Inn sits on the Sound of Arisaig; the community took over running it in February 2025 and completed the purchase that October, and the Arisaig Hotel was built around 1720 as a coaching inn on the old coast road to Mallaig.

The Lochailort Inn is the only pub on the long empty stretch of the A830 between Fort William and Arisaig, though it shuts every weekday lunchtime, so time your run.

The best pubs in Wester Ross and Ullapool

The Applecross Inn is right at the water’s edge over the Bealach na Ba, looking across to Skye and Raasay, though it is closed on Tuesdays and opens at three on Wednesdays. The Badachro Inn is three miles down a dead-end road on the south side of Loch Gairloch. The Old Inn at Gairloch harbour pours its own ale brewed at Loch Ewe, and shuts for the winter, opening again in early March.

In Ullapool, the Ceilidh Place started in 1970 as a small cafe in a boat shed. The Ferry Boat Inn is the local. The Arch Inn dates itself to 1793, five years after Telford laid the town out as a herring port.

Tigh an Eilean is a row of whitewashed cottages on the seafront at Shieldaig. The Beinn Bar at Annat sits at the head of Loch Torridon.

The Kinlochewe Hotel was founded in 1800 at the foot of the Torridon hills. The Plockton Inn is ten minutes’ walk from the station in one of the prettiest villages on the west coast, and is seafood-led.

The best pubs in Sutherland and Caithness

The Crask Inn stands under Ben Klibreck. The former owners gave the inn to the Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, so it is now owned by the Scottish Episcopal Church. The beer is keg rather than cask these days, and it is closed on Mondays.

Dornoch Castle Hotel is a 15th-century building with around three hundred malts by the glass, tastings in its vaulted dungeon and the Dornoch Distillery and Thompson Bros bottlings poured at the bar.

The Scourie Hotel is a 16th-century Mackay fortified house that the Duke of Sutherland turned into a coaching inn, originally the Stafford Arms. The Kylesku Hotel by the old ferry ramp serves seafood landed by the boats a few hundred yards away, and shuts from late November to the middle of February.

The John O’Groats Brewery tap room is the most northerly brewery tap on the British mainland, metres from the Pentland Firth, with several of its beers named after the Firth’s whirlpools: Swelkie, Merry Men, Duncansby.

Thurso has the Commercial, a proper two-room town pub with a real fire and a weekly fiddle session on Wednesdays. Wick has Mackays, whose frontage is the whole of Ebenezer Place, listed by Guinness as the shortest street in the world.

The Ulbster Arms at Halkirk is a fishing hotel on the Thurso river. The Bannockburn Inn at Helmsdale serves pizzas out of its own ovens, with a takeaway from four and parking for a handful of campervans. It is closed on Mondays and opens at five the rest of the week.

The best pubs on the Isle of Skye

The Old Inn at Carbost is on the shore of Loch Harport a hundred metres from Talisker, with trestle tables at the water’s edge and three handpumps, usually Isle of Skye Brewery.

The Stein Inn at Waternish is the oldest inn on the island, in a crofting village on Loch Bay.

Seumas’ Bar at Sligachan is the climbers’ bar, on a hotel site going back to 1830 that has been a base for Cuillin mountaineers ever since, with over 400 whiskies.

Am Pràban at Hotel Eilean Iarmain on Sleat is a wood-panelled bar with an open fire and traditional sessions. The hotel has changed hands and now trades under new management, so the bar and the sessions are worth confirming before you go.

In Portree, the Isles Inn on Somerled Square is the most reliable pint in the town. The Ferry Inn at Uig is a family-run 19th-century inn half a mile from the terminal with a five-table restaurant built on seafood landed at the pier, open Tuesday to Saturday evenings only.

The best pubs in Argyll

The George Hotel at Inveraray has flagstone floors, centuries-old stone walls and four open fires in the restaurant alone, plus a Whisky Snug holding over five hundred bottles.

The Oban Inn dates itself to 1790 and the building is one of the few left from the town’s early 19th-century plan. CAMRA’s Argyll Pub of the Year in 2026.

Tigh an Truish on Seil, just over the Clachan Bridge, is an 18th-century inn whose name means house of the trousers, from the kilt ban.

The Ardshiel at Campbeltown has around eight hundred malts at the foot of Kintyre, within walking distance of Springbank, Glen Scotia and Glengyle.

The Coylet Inn on Loch Eck is a 17th-century coaching inn that was shut for five years after a fire and reopened in 2020, and the Creggans at Strachur is long associated with the diplomat and writer Sir Fitzroy Maclean, who owned it, though it shuts from late November until the middle of March.

The Kilchrenan Inn near the shore of Loch Awe is an 18th-century former trading post, now a restaurant with rooms, closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The Lochnell Arms at North Connel looks straight at the Falls of Lora, the tidal rapids where Loch Etive meets the sea.

The best pubs on Islay and Jura

Lucci’s at the Bowmore Hotel holds around eighteen hundred single malts drawn only from Islay and Jura, some of them distillery exclusives. The family have run it for over forty years.

The Ballygrant Inn in the woods between Bridgend and Port Askaig has over three hundred malts in a bar it bills as award-winning.

The Port Askaig Hotel is right on the pier where the Jura and Kennacraig ferries berth, and its Old Port Bar claims to be the oldest continually licensed premises on Islay.

An Tigh Seinnse at Portnahaven is a single room in a fishing village at the far south-western tip of the Rhinns.

On Jura, the hotel at Craighouse is the only bar on the island, reached by the Islay ferry and then the Feolin crossing, with rum and gin made on Jura and sold nowhere else.

The best pubs on Mull, Coll and Colonsay

The Mishnish on the Tobermory harbour front is a few minutes from the ferry, full of old shipping and town memorabilia. The Bellachroy at Dervaig bills itself as the oldest inn in the Hebrides, and its restaurant is closed on Wednesdays.

The Keel Row at Fionnphort stands beside the Iona ferry slip at the far western end of the Ross of Mull and is the departure point for the Staffa boats.

The Coll Hotel is the only pub on Coll, above the harbour at Arinagour, reached by CalMac from Oban. The Colonsay Hotel was begun in 1750 and is the only pub on that island, with open fires and bare floorboards in the bar.

The best pubs on Arran and Bute

The Pierhead Tavern in the middle of Lamlash has a roof terrace looking over the bay to Holy Isle and is the only pub on Arran still serving cask.

The Lochranza Country Inn sits at the far north end of the island facing the castle, beside the summer ferry slip to Kintyre, in red deer country.

On Bute, the Kingarth Hotel is ten minutes south of everything else, with cask ale, five en suite rooms and food from noon to nine.

The best pubs in the Outer Hebrides

The Isle of Harris Brewery moved down to the pier at Leverburgh in 2024 and its taproom pours four changing taps of its own beer.

The Westford Inn is the only pub on North Uist, licensed since 1896 in a Category B listed Georgian building.

Am Politician on Eriskay is named after the SS Politician, which ran aground between the island and South Uist in February 1941 carrying some 264,000 bottles of whisky.

On Lewis, the Crown Inn on Castle Street in Stornoway is the only cask ale in the town, with two handpumps in each of its two bars, sixteen rooms and over 120 gins. The hotel will tell you King Charles bought a cherry brandy here in 1963, aged 14, having given his detective the slip.

The Criterion round the corner on Point Street is the only pub in the Western Isles with a historic interior, which CAMRA rate one star: a single small room refitted in the 1930s with its curved counter, gantry and fixed seating still in place. No cask and no food, but there is a chip shop across the alley and tables outside.

At the top of the island, the Cross Inn at Ness is four miles short of the Butt of Lewis and the end of the Hebridean Way, with a real fire in a converted crofting barn behind the inn.

The best pubs in Orkney

Helgi’s is a converted shipping office with a stone floor and an upstairs room over the water. The St Ola next door has a serious whisky range and music sessions every Sunday.

The Bothy Bar at the Albert Hotel is the busy local. The Orkney Hotel’s Royal Cask Whisky Bar holds over a thousand bottles.

The Ferry Inn at Stromness is a few steps from the NorthLink terminal, with local cask, single malts and a music programme running to fortnightly trad sessions and the Orkney Blues and Folk festivals.

Orkney Brewery set up in a converted Victorian school house at Quoyloo in 1988 and its tasting hall is the deepest cask range in the islands, with four changing beers straight from the source and a Dark Island hotpot on the menu. It closes for the winter, so check it is open before you drive out.

Out of town, the Kettletoft on Sanday has seals visible from the bar window and Swannay on all year, though its rooms are not letting at the moment.

The best pubs in Shetland

The Lounge Bar in Lerwick is the place to go to hear Shetland fiddle music. Busta House has owners recorded here from 1567 and its oldest part was built in 1588. Its Long Room lounge holds around 280 whiskies, and there is a ghost called Barbara Pitcairn who died aged 35 and is said to be still looking for her son Gideon.

The Thule Bar is on Lerwick’s historic waterfront, named after Ultima Thule from Tacitus’ account of a Roman ship sighting Shetland. The Douglas Arms a few streets inland has live music in the lounge regularly and Up Helly Aa memorabilia.

The Scalloway Hotel on the harbour front has a two AA rosette restaurant and the Sumburgh Hotel is a short walk from Jarlshof at the very southern tip of the mainland.