One thing you’ll get to learn about cruising is that sometimes the place on the itinerary is not actually the place that the ship docks at. There’s a good reason for this if, for instance, the place you’re visiting is inland since cruise ships haven’t yet embraced fold-out legs or tank treads to cater for the lack of sea. Stupid cruise ships. We’d already had this a few times on this British Isles cruise with Cork being listed as the place to visit when we were actually docked at Cobh; Dublin was really Dun Laoghaire; Glasgow was really Greenock. Edinburgh would be yet another example with the actual port being South Queensferry and, as with Dublin, it was a tender port too. It’s always worth checking these things out for yourself before the cruise so you know where the ship should be and so that you aren’t surprised. Luckily for us that’s what we did so we knew what our options for the day would be if we wanted to visit Scotland’s capital city:
- 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 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.