• We could have booked an excursion with Princess, but these were horribly expensive for what they were offering.
• We could have booked an excursion with a private company, but there weren’t many options here and the addition of a tender port into the mix adds a timing complication to consider as Princess will prioritise getting its own excursion passengers off first. Although, we’re Elite level so we could have jumped the queue. It’s a perk!
• We could have tried to get a taxi from the port but we suspected they would be somewhat inundated with similar requests so this might be tricky.
• We could have run the fifteen or so kilometres from the dock to the city but not in this universe.
• We could have taken the train to Edinburgh. Cheap, quick, looked simple enough.

We’d decided that we were going to do the lattermost thing of tendering ashore, walking to the train station, then spending the few pounds that it would have cost to head into Edinburgh.

And then we changed our minds in the morning over breakfast. We’re like that.

We enjoyed the views of the Forth Bridges from our balcony when we woke up and there were already tender boats shuttling across the water for those with early and probably long excursions planned for the day. As I started to peruse the local area on my phone’s map to confirm train times I saw that there were a couple of local boat tour operators in South Queensferry. Since we’d had a planned boat tour cancelled on us at the last minute when we visited Lerwick we decided that we’d see if there was the possibility of booking a trip once we were on land. If not then we could still always head into Edinburgh but at the back of our minds was the thought that it probably felt like a city that could do with longer time visiting to really appreciate it.

We jumped on the next tender boat ashore – that Elite perk I mentioned – and a short trip that included passing under one of the three Forth Bridges took place before we stepped ashore at Hawes Pier. This was the spot from which the ferry service used to cross the water until the bridges were constructed. Queensferry gets its name from the ferry service being established in the eleventh century by Queen Margaret.

We had a lovely view of Regal Princess at anchor in the Firth of Forth between two of the supports of the Forth Rail Bridge under which we’d just travelled. At the time of its opening in the late nineteenth century it was the longest single cantilever span bridge in the world although it’s now in second place.

We found a tour boat operator and made some enquiries but were told the place we needed to go to in order to buy tickets was about one and a half kilometres to the west of where we were, located in the marina. We had plenty of time before any trips would be setting off so we casually headed off in that direction and enjoyed the pleasant weather and some of the charms that earned South Queensferry an award of prettiest Scottish town in early 2025.

A seal sculpture represents the sort of wildlife you can see on Inchcolm Island and that would be the place we would end up taking our boat trip to later in the day. Spoiler.

There were plenty of photos taken along the shoreline walk whenever any of the three bridges made for an interesting or just pleasing composition.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the tiled sculpture of a sea serpent in South Queensferry is the Loch Ness Monster but this is actually the Guardian of the Forth and was designed by schoolchildren.

At the western end of the main street of the town there were a couple of points of interest very close to one another. A stone drinking fountain had been erected in honour of John Reid, provost for Queensferry for the last decade and a half of the nineteenth century. The small garden around it was very nice and we particularly liked the modern bird sculpture mounted on the railings nearby.

Next to the garden was the unmissable sight of the Jubilee Clock Tower atop Rosebery Hall. The hall was formerly the town’s tollbooth dating to around the start of the seventeenth century and in addition to collecting taxes it served as a court and small jail too. A steeple and clock was added to the building in the eighteenth century but a new one replaced it to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

Not long after this, after walking beneath the Forth Road Bridge, we reached the marina. More photos of the three bridges were taken because the moment demanded it, and we had a clear view of the newest Queensferry Crossing Bridge too now.

At the marina we found the boat tour company’s office and bought tickets for the next sailing. We still had some time to kill so ended up seeing what Scotts Bar was like. Unfriendly, confusing, a bit up itself, but convenient for us.

In the next post we hop on a boat tour to Inchcolm Island to look at the abbey ruins, encounter angry birds in real life, and only slightly panic when our boat ends up being very late coming back for us.

Our embarkation point was at the marina situated between the Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing, and with us travelling eastwards out of the Firth of Forth this meant we’d sail under the Forth Road Bridge and the Forth Rail Bridge.

The first point of interest on this boat tour if you exclude passing under the bridges – although passing under bridges is always cool; ask any cruiser, or troll for that matter – was Inchgarvie, one of several small islands in this area of water. This particular island’s location made it a useful stopping point for boats between both sides of the water before the bridges were constructed and, like some of the other islands, it had housed fortifications at numerous points in its history due to the strategic defensive location.

It wasn’t long before we passed Regal Princess at anchor. Look! I can see our cabin from here!

Hound Point is an oil export terminal. Oil, processed and stored on the southern shore, is pumped to the terminal to then be loaded onto carriers. I like the industrial beauty of these monsters even if, like sane people, I long for the move away from fossil fuels and preferably ahead of them simply being exhausted for short-term and selfishly short-sighted gains for the already super-rich.

We now approached Inchcolm, and from the southern side there was a lovely view of the abbey that we’d be exploring in a little while.

Our boat docked around the northern side of the island just beside the amusingly-named Inchgnome upon which numerous gnomes stood.

We were now free to explore the island for an hour and a half on our own. Our guides on the boat had given us some history of the place, indication of where we couldn’t go – there was a private property just beyond the abbey ruins – and warnings about the gulls. They were nesting during our arrival and would be numerous, noisy, and potentially aggressive. We were told to keep our distance and if the gulls didn’t want us near them then they’d make it clear and we should back away if we didn’t want to risk losing an eye.

There are a few tales about when a religious building was first constructed with dates in the twelfth century mentioned, but it wasn’t until 1235 that Augustinian brothers and priests started using it as a proper abbey. Inchcolm Abbey was eventually abandoned in 1560 as a result of the Scottish Reformation and it had suffered numerous attacks in the intervening centuries. Nevertheless, it is the most complete example of monastic ruins in Scotland.

At the back of the abbey we started to head off up a grassy area and got just a little way up it when the gulls gave us cause to reconsider. A combination of not wanting to cause the birds stress and not wanting to be known as “those people with the bleeding heads” on the journey back sent us into the abbey ruins once more instead.

Inchcolm Abbey just had a great feeling about it. The sense of isolation helped, and maybe the winged threat all around added to the atmosphere, but the completeness of some of the areas such as the cloisters and refectory really made it easy to find yourself immersed in the place.

We headed back closer to the area where we’d been dropped off on Inchcolm Island. At certain times of the year puffins will nest around the island and had there been a chance of seeing them then I might have been able to persuade my wife to join me as I then headed up the hill for a look around. My wife has a thing for puffins, but because this wasn’t Puffin Time she was happy to hang around near the bottom while I clambered up for some views around and to check out some of the defensive structures placed on the island during both of the twentieth century’s world wars.

Something struck me while I was up the hill – figuratively, not literally, despite the gulls – and that was that I had a very clear view all around the island and along the Forth, and the boat was due back in the next five minutes or so. Only, there was no sign of the boat. I headed down to where everyone on our tour was gathering.

“No sign of the boat,” I told my wife, nervously. She did not look happy.

We weren’t the only people to notice no boat but we were the only people there with a time pressure on us as we were the only people who’d arrived in the area aboard Regal Princess. An announcement was made that confirmed, yes, the boat was late but that it was on its way. So we waited. And waited. And wandered around a little to see if there were any sightings of the boat. And waited.

The boat arrived around half an hour late and I’d like to say that it motored its way back to the port to make up for it but it actually slowed several times to see if it could spot any seals on rocks in the area much to our continuing mild panic. However, I did have a nice chat with one of the guides and learnt that part of the problem had been that one of their boats had been damaged while assisting in tendering operations for our cruise ship. This at least gave me some hope that I might have a good case for blaming Princess if the ship was held up waiting for us to get back. Assuming it waited at all.

We sailed back under two of the three bridges, docked at the marina, and set off at a brisk pace back through Queensferry and to Hawes Pier to catch a tender boat back to the ship. Not only were we back in plenty of time before the last boat was due to leave, we had to wait quite a while as several busloads of cruise passengers arrived back just before us. We were rather relieved.

Minor trauma at the end aside, this was a fabulous way to spend a few hours at this cruise port, especially as it had been a Sunday so the main draw of Edinburgh wasn’t quite as appealing due to how many things of interest there might have been closed. The island and abbey were gorgeous and the mix of wildlife-spotting and immersion in history was perfect.

In the next post in this series it’s the penultimate day of this British Isles cruise and the last sea day on Regal Princess.