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We often get customers asking us: "Can we stay in a real-life castle on our holiday?" We often have to respond, tail between our legs, "Well, it's not as easy as you think. There are very few castles you can actually stay in..."

Scotland has to be the capital of castles. The iconic Eilean Donan castle (pictured, which you can't say in, but you can visit and hire out for weddings) is just one of many. Often set against dramatic landscapes, Scottish castles are the real deal; the fairytale castles you dream about living in when you're a little kid.

This year we decided that "It's really difficult" is not good enough, and that if we really put our minds to it, surely we could find some beautiful castle hotels, which were close enough together that we could make a cycling holiday out of linking them all together. Enter: Wendy, our founder and real pioneer in the gentle cycling movement. Wendy is very determined and has a knack for finding hidden gems. We entrusted the challenge to her, and lo and behold, she came back triumphant!

She has designed a fantastic bike tour around Scotland, which includes overnight stays in four stunning castles. Featured en route are Inverlochy Castle; Tulloch Castle; Mansfield Castle; and Kincraig Castle. Inverlochy is a 5 star gem of a hotel, which sits nestled in the foothills of Scotland's highest mountain - the mighty Ben Nevis - and in some of the most beautiful scenery in Scotland. Close by are the falls at Glen Nevis, the monument at Glenfinnan and the mountains of Glencoe. Inverlochy was a private residence for over 100 years until 1969, when it was converted from a family home into a castle hotel. Tulloch Castle dates from the 12th century, and offers breathtaking Highland views from its imposing position in the Scottish countryside. The rooms here are a particular favourite of ours, and are beautifully renovated. Mansfield Castle, an imposing Victorian building set in gorgeous countryside, has award-winning food and magnificent oak panelling throughout. And Kincraig, possibly our favourite among them all, is an impossibly romantic castle with fine views overlooking the Cromarty Firth. We love the cosy interiors and the staff here.

If you're wondering how to get more info, this tour is currently a bespoke cycling holiday only, so please do drop us a line if you'd like to hear more!

There's been lots of talk about National Parks Week in the media over the past couple of days, so we wanted to throw our two cents in (i.e. give ourselves an excuse to get misty-eyed and wax lyrical about a few of Mother Nature's finest works). We love a National Park, and many of our walking and cycling routes travel right through some of the best of them. Europe certainly holds its own in this department, but there are many abroad we are dying to visit. Yosemite and Yellowstone for one! Perhaps one day we'll design a Carter Company holiday there... it would be the perfect excuse to visit.

In the meantime, we share some of our favourites in Europe..

1. Dartmoor National Park. Rich in antiquities and archaeology, and home to gorgeous native ponies, Dartmoor is a moorland with unique exposed granite hilltops known as 'tors', which provide important habitats for the park's flora and fauna. But Dartmoor is also famous for its myths and legends. It is supposedly home to a headless horseman, pixies, a pack of spectral hounds, and a very large black dog! It's no surprise then that many writers and artists have been inspired by Dartmoor - including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Eagle-eyed Hogwarts fans may also recognise Dartmoor as the setting for the the Quidditch World Cup final in 1994 between Ireland and Bulgaria in 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'. Visit on our 'Devon coast to coastl' cycling holiday.

2. The Yorkshire Dales. An upland area of the Pennines in the historic county of Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Dales have a special allure about them that keeps us going back for more. What's it like? Think heather moorland, lush green valleys, rolling hills often shrouded in a charismatic mist and upland pastures criss-crossed with old stone walls and peppered with grazing sheep. 'Dale' means 'river valley', and typically the dales in this area are named after their river i.e. "(name of river)+dale" - e.g. Swaledale. The Dales are also home to some charming towns - we particularly love Richmond. And did you know you can walk to the Lake District through the Dales on the National Trail the 'Dales Way', which our founder Wendy walked last year. She highly recommends it! Or our 'In the footsteps of famous writers' walking holiday stops for a few days in the area.

3. Monfrague National Park. Spain has 15 National Parks and Monfrague is one of its newest, located in western Spain. It is a recognised UNESCO Biosphere reserve. The landscape is made up of an magnificent mountainous ridge, which the River Tagus has cut through, and there is a rather dramatic rock face, the famous Penafalcon, which is on the western side. The eastern side boasts a castle. Monfrague has long been designated a Special Protection Area for birdlife. Species nesting here include raptors, such as the Eurasian black vulture, the Spanish imperial eagle and the golden eagle, as well as the black stork, the rare white-rumped swift and the Eurasian eagle owl. Interesting fact: there park is also home to just one (human) village, Villareal de San Carlos, which has a population of just 28. Savour the spectacular bird life on our 'Land of the Spanish Conquistadors' cycling holiday.

4. The Trossachs. Our not-so-gentle cycling holiday in this fab part of Scotland - aptly titled 'Scotland's Grand Tour' - is a great way to explore the Trossachs. It's definitely 'grand', both in terms of the luxury hotels en route and the level of physical exertion required to pedal up some of those hills (!), but we'll let you into a little secret: most of our customers who choose this holiday either start or switch to an electric bike. And there's no shame in that! Why not - it offers more of an opportunity to soak up the landscape and take in the great beauty of the Trossachs.

5. The Lake District. An all-time favourite of not one but many of our trip planners, the Lakes (see pic above) are unmissable and unrivalled (in our opinion!). It may be the wettest place in England - an annual average of 130 inches of rain falls on Borrowdale - but if you're nifty you can skirt around the bad weather: Keswick is only a short car ride away and enjoys a far dryer year with just 50 inches of rainfall. You can also sort around the crowds in summer if you know what you're doing (hopefully that's where we come in) but the landscape here is totally mind-blowing and even when it's pouring down with rain, this National Park has the ability to charm and surprise. In amongst climbing England's highest mountain - if you're feeling energetic -and boating across its deepest lake, you can also visit the houses of some of England's most famous writers who had immensely fruitful creative relationships to Lakeland, from Beatrix Potter to John Ruskin and William Wordsworth. Don't miss it! Try one of our bespoke Lake District walking holidays.

We were really excited to see that this week, the UK Restaurant Awards named The Sportsman in Whitstable, Kent the Best Restaurant in the UK. Our excitement was not only because we think it's well deserved and we love the story of this special eatery, but also because anyone who cycles one of our Kent bicycle holidays rides directly past its front door! Reservations are required months in advance, but if you're organised and book your holidays in good time, then there's no reason that you couldn't be stopping off en route to enjoy some seriously good food on your cycling jolly around the Garden of England.

With typical English dry wit, The Sportsman's Twitter page describes the restaurant as 'a grotty seaside pub'. It's located next to a run-down caravan site, in a building that used to be a hotel. The owner and head chef Stephen Harris is himself not your average pretentious Michelin starred chef - he used to work in the City, is self-taught, and once played in a punk band with his younger brother. It was this same brother's untimely death by drowning in 1994 that inspired Stephen to leave his job and pursue a career as a chef and restaurateur. He purchased The Sportsman, a hotel he used to play next to as a child, in 1999 and did it up over a week with a group of friends on a budget of £30,000. By 2008, the word was out about the quality of the food and Michelin awarded him a star.

It's all about local produce at The Sportsman, with most of the meat and vegetables coming from Kent, and the fish and seafood from the local fishermen. The offering changes daily, with both a la carte and tasting menu options. We particularly loved the home-made bread and the Whitstable oysters, which are served inventively: you can choose between poached oysters with rhubarb and seaweed, oysters with pickled cucumber and avruga caviar or rock oysters with hot chorizo!

Book any one of our Kent cycling holidays and experience The Sportsman for yourself - it's well worth the trip!

There's nothing quite like cycling over a viaduct or underneath an aqueduct. There's something ancient and epic about their scale that's really quite exhilarating. We'll never forget a recce trip we took to Scotland, to research routes and scout out special hotels, in the middle of March last year. The weather was naturally... challenging. In fact at the time we visited there was a full-on snow blizzard, which made navigation particularly interesting! Although markedly different from the lush summertime landscapes, there's something about Scotland's scenery in bleak mid-winter that's very magnetic. Shades of grey, purple and dull green, and plenty of cloud, create an almost mythical atmosphere. It was on one of those days that we were investigating a section of the route which crossed the Glen Ogle viaduct. As we jumped out of the car and onto our bikes, the clouds parted to reveal a slither of bright blue sky, and our rides across the viaduct were bathed in a rare moment of bright sunshine. It was magical!

In honour of such exhilarating cycle rides, we share our top 3 aqueduct / viaducts to see by bicycle:

1. Meldon Viaduct

Featuring on our fabulous Coastal adventures in Devon and Cornwall not-so-gentle cycling holiday, the Meldon Viaduct is a former railway bridge built in 1871 to carry the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) across the West Okement River at Meldon on Dartmoor in Devon. It is unusual in that the trusses of the bridge are supported on wrought iron lattice piers. It is one of only two such railway bridges remaining in the United Kingdom. Today the bridge is a cycle track known as 'The Granite Way' and it offers fantastic views of the surrounding countryside.

2. Aqueduct of Segovia

The Aqueduct of Segovia is a Roman aqueduct and one of the most significant and best-preserved ancient monuments left on the Iberian Peninsula. It is located in the historic town of Segovia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the start point for our Medieval heart of Spain gentle cycling holiday. Built by the Emperor Domitian (AD 81-96), the aqueduct transported water from the Rio Frio river, situated in mountains 17 km (11 mi) from the city in the La Acebeda region - right up until the mid 19th century. Its 36 semi-circular arches are really quite spectacular.

3. Glen Ogle Viaduct

The scene of our magical moment in Scotland last March, cycling across this viaduct is as fun to cycle as it looks from the road down below. Find it on our Lochs and glens to Edinburgh self-guided bicycle tour. Set high on the side of a dramatic Scottish mountain, the Glen Ogle Viaduct comprised part of an ambitious cross-country line connecting Callander with the coastal port of Oban, some 72 miles distant. The western half of the route is still operational, but the section the viaduct is part of is now the Glen Ogle Way. The viaduct's remote setting ensures it remains an iconic structure, with the classic view of it looking down towards Lochearnhead, the nearest community two miles to the south-east.

We're really excited to be adding Edinburgh to our ever-expanding list of exciting cities you can now visit on a Carter Company cycling holiday. Whilst the capital of Scotland was an 'optional added extra' on our 'In the footsteps of famous writers' walking tour, we now offer a fantastic cycling holiday which finishes in the city: 'Lochs and glens to Edinburgh'. You can choose between a fast paced 6 night version and a more leisurely 8 night version, depending on your need for/enjoyment of speed!

In celebration of this news and to whet the appetite, we're sharing our highlights of Edinburgh with you: our favourite places and things to do in the city.

1. Visit the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Our favourite way to get there is to walk along the canal from the lovely Stockbridge area to the gallery. Join the canal next to Pizza Express and start the walk from there. If you have the good fortune of doing so on a Sunday, we recommend pottering around Stockbridge market too!

2. Have afternoon tea at Henderson's, a famous old-school vegetarian restaurant in New Town and a real favourite with the locals. Try their (vegan!) chocolate and beetroot cake with peanut butter ganache - delicious.

3. Walk around the Craggs (no trip to Edinburgh is complete unless you do!), and if you’re feeling energetic, all the way up Arthur’s Seat. It’s a really beautiful and unusual bit of a landscape and you can look down across the whole of the city from the peak. On the way back, stop by at the Palace of Holyrood House.

4. Wander around the Old Town. The old cobbled streets of this area are gorgeous. Try Victoria Street, Grassmarket and Cockburn Street, and then treat yourself to dinner at The Witchery – a lavish, Gothic-style dining room in a quirky boutique hotel.

5. Go to Leith (Edinburgh’s waterside/Forth estuary) and see the former Royal Yacht moored there, potter around the waterside, explore the charming tiny streets and finish off with a walk east along the coast for a short distance to Portobello beach, where you can enjoy a paddle in the sea - if you can brave the cold!