Where to Stay in South Queensferry: The 7 Best Hotels Under the Forth Bridges (2026)

On the water: the High Street and the Hawes. Best for the bridges, the pubs and the pier. Everything a visitor comes to Queensferry for is on this half-mile of shore: the cobbled High Street with its raised pavements, the harbour, Hawes Pier where the Inchcolm boats leave, and the three bridges filling the sky to the east. Three places let rooms here, and all three are within eleven minutes' walk of the pier. Dalmeny station is 10 to 20 minutes up the hill behind them, and the train averages 20 minutes to Waverley.

Orocco Pier is my pick for the town itself, and the one I'd send a couple to. It's a 17-room boutique hotel in a tall old building on the High Street, with Samphire, the seafood restaurant (Thursday to Sunday only), and Antico, the all-day café bar, on the ground floor, and breakfast is included on every rate its own engine sells. From the front door, Hawes Pier is a ten-minute walk east along the shore and the bridge viewpoint sits on the way. A Petite Double with an interior view was £85 for a Tuesday in November and a Classic Double £98.10 non-refundable. The room that matters is the Executive Sea View, a king bed 'overlooking the Forth and iconic bridges' in the hotel's words: £126 non-refundable or £140 flexible, breakfast included either way. The Superior Sea View adds a seating area, a bath and a Nespresso machine for £139.50 non-refundable.

The trade-offs are the building and the parking. There's no lift or accessible room advertised, so ask before you book an upper floor; the Petite and the standard Classic rooms face an interior wall or the High Street and get none of the view the hotel is famous for; and there's no car park, so you're on the High Street bays (£1.50 an hour, Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5:30pm), in the Binks on Rose Lane, or in the public car park under the rail bridge. Pay the premium for a sea-view room (£28 over a Classic on the same rate, £55 over the Petite); one Google reviewer says rooms 1 to 4 have the best morning view, so ask at check-in.

The Hawes Inn is the bed under the bridge. It stands at the foot of the Forth Bridge's southern cantilever, a minute's walk from Hawes Pier, and Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have come up with Kidnapped while staying in room 13 in 1886; the inn gets its own passage in the novel. Today it's an Innkeeper's Collection hotel with 14 rooms above a Vintage Inns pub, which means Hypnos beds, a free car park, free Wi-Fi and a breakfast menu from 7am on weekdays. It's also the closest hotel to Dalmeny station, 550 yards by the hotel's own measure and ten minutes on foot, so it works without a car. A standard Double was £101.70 room only on the advance-purchase rate for a Tuesday in November, £113 flexible; add £23 to £26 for breakfast for two; and a 'With A View' twin or double, the ones facing the water, from £107.10.

It's a Mitchells & Butlers pub with bedrooms, and it reads like one. The site never says which bridge the view rooms face, and the standard Double, the Accessible Double and the Family room don't face the water at all; the bar below opens at 7am and runs to 11pm; no lift is advertised; and the value score is the lowest category in its Booking.com reviews. Two practical points: check-in closes at 10pm and the hotel can't promise access after that, so warn them if you're arriving late; and dogs (£15 a night) can only be added to a direct booking. Ask for a 'With A View' room, which costs about £6 more than a standard Double and is the whole reason to stay here.

The Stag Head Hotel is the honest budget option in the town, and only for a single traveller. It's a 17th-century pub on the High Street with a handful of rooms up a steep stair, three with their own bathroom and a Budget Single that shares, and the front rooms look straight down the water at the rail bridge. Hawes Pier is an eleven-minute walk. A Budget Single was £75 for a Tuesday in November, the cheapest bed on the High Street; for two people, though, the Twin or the Deluxe Double Sea View was £170 on the same night, more than a bridge-view room at Orocco Pier or the Hawes Inn with breakfast, and the Stag Head serves no breakfast at all.

That's the trade-off in one line: cheap alone, dear as a couple, and basic. The bar runs a disco on Friday and Saturday nights and the hotel's own listing warns of noise in the Twin and Family rooms until 1am; there's no lift, no guest parking and no pets; the bar doubles as reception and keeps pub hours, with check-in from 2pm to 11pm. It has no website of its own (the domain that looks like one is an affiliate page), so you book on Booking.com or ring the bar. If you do, ask for the Deluxe Double Sea View, come on a weeknight, and get your breakfast from the bakery next door.

Up the hill by the motorway junction. Best for parking, the airport and a family budget. A mile above the harbour, where the A90 splits for the Queensferry Crossing, Ferrymuir has a Tesco, a retail park, the motorway services and the two hotels built for the road rather than the harbour. Neither is in the old town: the High Street is a 16 to 21 minute walk downhill, Hawes Pier 25 to 31 minutes, and the bridges are something you see from the top floors rather than from the pavement. What you get in exchange is free parking, the airport 15 to 20 minutes away, and the 43 bus to George Street from the stop at Ferrymuir Retail Park, every 20 minutes for £2.40.

Dakota Edinburgh is the best hotel in Queensferry by most measures that aren't the view, and where I'd eat, sleep and leave for the airport without seeing the town at all. Black glass outside, low light and leather inside, with air-conditioned rooms from a 23 sq m Classic Double up to 40 sq m suites, rainfall showers, a free gym, lifts, fully accessible wet-room bedrooms and The Grill, which cooks 28-day beef over coals (a 12 oz rib-eye is £42, fish and chips £23) from 6pm, with Sunday lunch from 1pm. A Classic Double was £122.50 prepaid or £133 flexible for a Tuesday in November, £160.50 with breakfast for two, and an Executive Double with a bridge view on the top two floors £152.50. Breakfast on its own is £20 a head and starts at 6:30am on weekdays, so a 10am departure is comfortable, and the Park, Stay & Fly rate (£198 that night) throws in 14 days of parking. Our guide to hotels near Edinburgh Airport covers that side of it.

The catch is that you're a mile above the town you came to see. Ferrymuir is a retail park with a supermarket, a petrol station and a drive-through for neighbours, the High Street is a 16-minute walk downhill and a steeper one back, Hawes Pier 25, and the only way to see the bridges from the hotel is to pay for a room that faces them: the Executive Bridge View is £30 more than a Classic, the Deluxe Suite £150. The free airport shuttle is a summer service, April to September, pre-booked (Booking.com lists a restricted weekday run for the winter), and Booking.com says no pets. Check-out is 11am, though the Sunday Sleepover rate (£124 with breakfast for a Sunday in November) includes a late one. Ask for an Executive Bridge View if the bridges matter; if they don't, the Classic King on the top floors is the better-value upgrade.

Premier Inn Edinburgh (South Queensferry) is the cheapest bed in the area for two, and I'd book it for a family driving north or anyone who just needs to sleep near the airport and the motorway. The hotel's own directions put it 'at South Queensferry Services, next to M&S petrol station and McDonalds', beside the A904 roundabout, and that's exactly what it is: the standard Premier Inn kit of king beds, blackout curtains, a lift, family and accessible rooms and an on-site Premier Inn restaurant, with free parking. A Standard Double was £61 room only on the non-refundable rate for a Tuesday in November, £82 semi-flexible and £102 fully flexible, and the unlimited breakfast is £11.99 a head with two children free per adult, so two adults with breakfast are under £85 on the cheap rate (family rooms are priced separately). The airport is 6.5 miles by the hotel's own reckoning.

The trade-offs are real. It's a 21-minute walk down to the High Street and 31 to Hawes Pier, and one Google reviewer warns there's no footpath from the hotel to the bus stop, so treat it as a car hotel; Dalmeny station is a mile away. The parking is free but 'limited' in the hotel's own word, and it gets busy, so arrive early. There is no air conditioning; every room gets a fan. Nothing in the building looks at the bridges. It's a clean, predictable bed at a price nowhere else in Queensferry can touch, and that's the whole case for it.

Out on the estates. Best for a couple with a car, a dog or an Outlander habit. West of the town the coast road runs past Port Edgar marina and into the Hopetoun estate, with the house at its centre, Midhope Castle on its far edge and one B&B on the road between them. Nothing out here is walkable from the harbour, but it's a ten-minute drive from the High Street and Dalmeny station and 15 from the airport, and it's the quietest night in Queensferry.

Parkhead House is that B&B, about three miles west of the town (the owners say two and a half) on the edge of Hopetoun's deer park, and the one I'd choose over any hotel in Queensferry for a quiet night. It's a 300-year-old former gamekeeper's cottage with two suites, each with its own sitting room where breakfast is served between 7:30am and 9:30am from Hopetoun Farm Shop produce: Iona on the ground floor, 70 sq m, twin or double, and Harris upstairs, two en-suite bedrooms for four with a roll-top bath and a view of the deer park. The back gate opens onto the park and the John Muir Way, Hopetoun House and Midhope Castle (Lallybroch in the series) are a walk away, and the owner, James, runs Outlander tours from the door. VisitScotland rates it four stars, and its 199 guest reviews on its booking system run at 194 five-out-of-fives.

Two honest caveats. First, it publishes no nightly rate and its online calendar shows no bookable dates, so the only way to book is to phone; the one priced product is a two-night stay plus a day's Outlander tour, from £995 for two. Second, it's rural: no pub, shop or restaurant within a walk, the High Street is a 9-minute drive and Hawes Pier 12 (an hour and a quarter on foot), and Dalmeny and Linlithgow stations are each a ten-minute drive. Up to two dogs are welcome (£10 a room on some dates), children are welcome, and check-in is 4pm to 6pm. Ask for Harris for the bath and the view, Iona if you'd rather avoid the stairs.

Across the water, in Fife. Best for the view of all three bridges. North Queensferry is the village at the far end of the bridges, a mile across the Forth and in a different council area, and it has the one thing the south shore can't give you: the whole crossing in a single view, the red cantilevers on one side and the two road bridges on the other. It has one hotel, its own station and, in 2026, no visitor levy.

The DoubleTree by Hilton Edinburgh Queensferry Crossing is the one hotel of the seven that isn't in South Queensferry at all, and the one with the best view of it. It stands on ten acres at St Margaret's Head, above the village, and looks back across the Forth at all three of them; the Shore Grill & Fish House and the 'with View' rooms are the reason people book. By car it's 14 minutes from Hawes Pier over the Queensferry Crossing; on foot it's an hour, most of it on the east footpath of the Forth Road Bridge, which is open to walkers and cyclists except in winds above 50mph. North Queensferry station is a 17-minute walk and the train averages 25 minutes to Waverley, from £7.30 return. A standard King Guest Room was £118 room only on the advance-purchase rate for a Tuesday in November, £129 flexible, and a King Guest Room with View £140 or £153; breakfast adds £20 a room. A King Junior Suite with View has a balcony over the water for £299.

Weigh the extras before you compare it with the Queensferry side. Self-parking is £7 a day (ignore the free-parking line on Booking.com), the standard King Guest Room makes no view claim, breakfast is an add-on, the free Wi-Fi is the 'limited' tier with a faster one charged, and there's no pool and no airport shuttle. Dogs are welcome for a £30 non-refundable fee, up to 25 lb. Book a 'with View' room or don't bother crossing the bridge; the view is what you're paying the £22 premium for.