Leith cruise ships berth at Ocean Terminal, three miles from Princes Street. It’s a small-ship port, not a big-ship one. The tram stop a short walk from the terminal runs into the city centre in about 21 minutes, and the Royal Yacht Britannia is alongside the berth.
Which cruise lines sail from Leith cruise port
Leith takes small ships, and the dock is the reason. Ships get to the berths through lock gates into an enclosed harbour, and Forth Ports caps them at 210 metres long, 30 metres wide and 9.5 metres of draught.
A 300-metre, 4,000-guest ship doesn’t fit through, so the cruises that start here are on small ships: Silversea, Azamara, Windstar and Lindblad. Bigger luxury ships from lines like Seabourn and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection call in for the day.
If you’re after a big-ship family sailing with water slides and kids’ clubs, this isn’t the port. Royal Caribbean and Princess don’t sail from Leith.
Ships confirmed at Leith include Azamara Quest, Scenic Eclipse, Seven Seas Voyager and Silver Endeavour. Azamara Quest is 180 metres and carries around 700 guests, comfortably inside the limit, and she has sat alongside over consecutive days with guests joining and leaving rather than making a quick call.
Leith is set up for that, with roughly 40 cruise vessels and 20,000 passengers a year, and it handles ships starting and finishing their trips as well as day calls.
Larger ships do turn up now and then. Seabourn Ovation was a rare visit by a big vessel, because most of them anchor at Newhaven or berth at South Queensferry and Rosyth instead. There’s also an outer deep-water berth outside the locks, used now and then by bigger ships, with different arrangements for getting ashore.
Edinburgh on your ticket may not mean Leith
Four different places on the Firth of Forth sell themselves as Edinburgh: the Port of Leith, the Port of Rosyth, the Newhaven anchorage and the South Queensferry anchorage. The city name on your paperwork won’t tell you which one you have.
Rosyth is the one that catches people. It’s on the north bank of the Forth in Fife, a different port from Leith, with two berths totalling 500 metres and none of the lock limit that shapes Leith.
Fred. Olsen’s Edinburgh cruises, Balmoral’s included, leave from Rosyth, which the line describes as 40 minutes from Edinburgh. Turn up on Ocean Drive for one of those and your ship will be on the other side of the water.
Newhaven is an anchorage where you get off by tender boat, about ten minutes to Newhaven Harbour, roughly 3 km north of the city centre. South Queensferry puts ships directly under the Forth Rail and Road Bridges. Both are anchorages rather than terminals, and both mean a tender ride and a different set of transfers.
So check the port code and the terminal address on your boarding documents, not the city. Leith berths are on Ocean Drive, beside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, and anything that doesn’t say Leith means a different start on the morning.
Where Leith cruises go and when the season runs
The Scottish cruise season runs from April to October, and Leith’s own departures mostly head north. Scenic Eclipse has a Leith to Reykjavik sailing and Seven Seas Voyager has a Leith to Stockholm one, with Aberdeen, Invergordon, Lerwick, Kirkwall, Ullapool, Oban, Greenock and Dublin turning up as later calls. Belfast often appears too, and there are cruises leaving from Belfast Harbour Port if you’d rather start from Northern Ireland.
A lot of Leith sailings are one-way rather than round trips, and that changes the planning. One-way means a flight home from a different city, a hotel at each end and no car parked at the port for a fortnight. Price the flights before you commit to the fare, not after.
Getting to Leith cruise terminal from Edinburgh Airport, Waverley and the city centre
The terminal is on Ocean Drive, three miles from Princes Street, two miles from Edinburgh Castle and about ten miles from Edinburgh Airport. The port puts the airport at roughly 30 minutes by road and Edinburgh Waverley rail station at 15 minutes.
Edinburgh Trams is the simplest way. The line runs from Newhaven through Ocean Terminal, The Shore, the Port of Leith and the city centre out to the airport, and the Ocean Terminal stop is beside the shopping centre, a short walk from the terminal building.
Trams come every seven minutes through the day and every ten minutes early morning and evening, taking about 21 minutes from Ocean Terminal to Princes Street. They’re low floor with level boarding and room for luggage.
Lothian buses 10, 34 and 35 run from the city centre to Ocean Terminal, with 11, 22, 34, 35 and 36 also serving the area. Buses take contactless for an adult single and give no change. Taxis wait on the quayside just beyond the terminal building.
Driving is straightforward until you get into the dock. Leith is a working port, so you follow the authorised route in and return through the gate your ship is using.
Ocean Terminal and the Royal Yacht Britannia have separate entrances. Anyone dropping you off heads for Ocean Drive and the terminal building itself.
Some lines run a paid shuttle into Edinburgh on Leith calls. The price is set per ship rather than per port, so ask your line rather than assuming.
Parking at Leith cruise port
Short and long stay parking sits right next to the terminal, with room for around 450 vehicles including coaches, but Forth Ports publishes no cruise tariff, no booking window and no online booking page for it. Arrangements vary by cruise line, so confirm with your line before you travel and get the answer in writing rather than turning up expecting a space.
Ocean Terminal’s multi-storey car park next door is free, with direct internal access to the centre from levels C and E. That covers a morning’s shopping or a Britannia visit. It’s a shopping centre car park, not a fortnight’s cruise parking, so don’t plan a two-week sailing around it.
If you have no confirmed port parking, have a fallback before the morning. A drop-off at the terminal on Ocean Drive and a lift home is a better plan than driving round the dock hoping for a space.
Where to stay near Leith cruise port
Stay in Leith if the sailing is the point and you want the shortest possible morning, because the terminal building, Ocean Terminal and the tram stop are all within a few minutes of each other. Stay in the city centre if you want Edinburgh itself, and accept a 15-minute road transfer or a 21-minute tram ride on the day.
Around Ocean Terminal you have the shopping centre’s shops, cafés and facilities on the doorstep. The Shore end of Leith has the quayside restaurants and bars within walking distance of the berth. Both areas work after the cruise as well as before it.
One timing warning: August brings the world’s largest arts festival to Edinburgh, filling 299 venues with more than 3,000 shows, and central streets and taxis become much harder. An August sailing is the one to sort accommodation for early.
Luggage storage at Leith cruise port
You won’t find left luggage at the Leith terminal, and the building is too compact to have a hall of lockers, so don’t build a plan around dropping bags there. The usual problem is a late flight after you get off in the morning, or arriving the night before with bags and a hotel that won’t take them yet.
For that, you can book luggage storage near the terminal and spend the spare hours in the city rather than on a bench.
What Leith cruise terminal is like on boarding day
Small. There’s a seating area, toilets, Wi-Fi and an onsite café, and that’s about the measure of it, so don’t expect Southampton’s departure lounges, a long wait in comfort or a big baggage hall. Check-in and baggage are handled in the same compact building.
Ocean Terminal shopping centre is a five-minute walk away, with shops, banking, restaurants, cafés, a spa, a gym, an indoor playground and a 12-screen cinema, plus free wheelchair and scooter loan from the ground-floor customer service desk.
Vessels at Ocean Terminal run their own security, and the public can’t wander in and out without the port’s approval. Use the authorised route and the gate your ship is using.
Royal Yacht Britannia, alongside the berth
Britannia is permanently berthed at Leith as a visitor attraction, and cruise ships berth alongside her, which makes her the one headline sight you can walk to from the gangway. You enter from the second floor of Ocean Terminal.
Allow two hours. The audio tour averages around 90 minutes, and last admission still leaves two hours to finish.
Opening is 9.30am to 4pm from April to September and 9.30am to 3.30pm in October, and the ship closes on 1 January and 25 December. Tickets cost the same online and at the door, but booking ahead emails a barcode so you don’t have to queue at the ticket desk, and the walk-up desk is contactless only.
The visitor centre, tour route, shop and Royal Deck Tearoom are all reached by lift as well as stairs.
Check hours and book at the Royal Yacht Britannia visitor page.
Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile from Leith
The Castle is two miles from the terminal, with the city centre about 15 minutes away by road, which puts it within reach of a sailing-day morning only if your boarding time is late and your bags have already gone. The Castle sits on its crag above the Royal Mile, which runs downhill to Holyrood, so the walk back up is the bit that catches people out.
Realistically, with luggage, a three-mile transfer and a check-in window, a castle-and-Royal-Mile morning is a stressed mistake. Do it on a proper extra night in the city instead.
Where to eat near Leith cruise port
The Shore, the quayside strip in the port district itself, is where to eat: bars and seafood restaurants within walking distance of the berth, three Michelin-starred restaurants within ten minutes of the port, and the independent places that earned Leith its name as a cultural quarter with award-winning kitchens.
- The Shore: quayside bars and seafood, the closest proper eating to the ship.
- Ocean Terminal: restaurants and cafés inside the centre, five minutes from the terminal, plus banking if you need cash.
- The Royal Deck Tearoom: loose-leaf tea and freshly baked scones onboard Britannia, for ticket holders.
Money in Leith: currency, cards and cash
Sterling, and cards and contactless work everywhere a visitor is likely to spend. Lothian buses take contactless for an adult single but give no change, and Britannia’s walk-up ticket desk is contactless only, so a few coins in a pocket are a convenience rather than a necessity. Ocean Terminal has banking facilities on site.
Best photo spots in Leith
The best shots are of the ship and the water around her. The Viewing Terrace inside Ocean Terminal gives an exterior view of Britannia without a ticket, and once you’re onboard her, the decks look out over Leith Harbour and the city skyline.
- Ocean Terminal Viewing Terrace: Britannia from outside, free, and indoors.
- Britannia’s decks: harbour and skyline in one frame.
What to wear in Leith: outfit ideas for a port day
Comfortable shoes with grip, for two reasons. Edinburgh’s Old Town is cobbled and built on gradients between the Castle crag and Holyrood, and Leith itself is an industrial dock where the distances between berth, terminal and transport are walked on hard dock roads rather than pavements. Smooth soles and sandals are the wrong call for either.
Keep your hands free as well. You’ll be moving between the berth, the terminal, a tram and a shopping centre, and a cross-body bag beats a suitcase you have to keep setting down.
For more inspiration, see these casual cruise outfit ideas for women and cruise outfit ideas for men.
What a Leith departure really costs
The lines that use Leith are largely premium or all-inclusive, so the headline fare looks high next to a big-ship Caribbean price and often bundles drinks, Wi-Fi, gratuities and sometimes excursions. Compare the whole trip rather than the fare: add a hotel at each end if the sailing is one-way, add flights home from a different city, and add the transfers.
Set that against a Southampton or Newcastle departure where you can drive, park and sail round trip, and the gap narrows or disappears. The cheap-looking option is not always the cheap one.
Who Leith suits and who it doesn’t
Leith is excellent for Scotland-based travellers who want to avoid airports altogether, and for couples who like small ship cruising with fewer people on deck. It’s a poor fit for families wanting water parks and kids’ clubs, for anyone chasing the lowest fare, and for anyone who needs a wide choice of dates, because the season is short and the ship list is short with it.
Leith, Rosyth, Newcastle, Southampton or Greenock
Leith is the small-ship Edinburgh port with the city on its doorstep. Rosyth is the other Edinburgh port, across the Forth in Fife, and it takes the ships the lock gates keep out.
Rosyth has two berths totalling 500 metres and no length cap of the kind that shapes Leith, which is why Fred. Olsen sails its Edinburgh programme, Balmoral included, from there. The line calls it 40 minutes from Edinburgh, and because it’s on the north bank you drive there rather than taking the tram. Fred. Olsen’s no-fly departures from Rosyth are the ones to look at if that suits you better than a city-centre berth, and cruises from Rosyth across the Forth sets out the rest.
For big ships, Leith is simply not in the running, and that’s where the other ports come in. Southampton and the Port of Tyne at Newcastle are where the large-ship choice lives, set out in cruises from Southampton and its terminals and in the Port of Tyne guide to Newcastle.
Greenock is the west-coast option, serving Glasgow and the islands, covered in cruises from Greenock on the west coast.
Leith is one of a long list of UK departure ports, from the Port of Hull round to the south coast, and where it sits among them decides whether that means convenience or compromise. Anyone still weighing Scotland against the English ports will find the rest of the country’s departures in cruises from the UK.
Accessibility at Leith cruise port
Leith is an industrial port, and the practical problem is distance rather than steps. Berth to terminal to transport is walked on dock roads, and passengers are expected to use the authorised route or an arranged transfer. If you need assistance, arrange it with your cruise line before you travel, because the terminal is compact, seating is limited and the route between ship and transport isn’t a pavement.
In the city, the Old Town adds cobbles and gradients on top of the transfer. Britannia is fully lift-accessible across the tour route and recommends allowing extra time.
Leith cruise port FAQs
What is the address of Leith cruise terminal?
Leith Cruise Terminal, 100 Ocean Drive, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6JJ. It sits on the waterfront beside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, on the south bank of the Firth of Forth.
Can you walk from Leith cruise terminal into Edinburgh?
You can, in around 50 minutes to the city centre, but it’s a working dock route with luggage in tow. With bags, the tram or a taxi is the sensible version.
How long is the tram from Ocean Terminal to Edinburgh Airport?
The full run from Ocean Terminal to the airport takes roughly 45 to 58 minutes on a direct line with no change, so allow the longer end with luggage. Trams are low floor with level boarding.
What time is the first and last tram from Newhaven?
The first tram leaves Newhaven at 05:20 and the last at 23:56. Daytime frequency is every seven minutes, dropping to every ten minutes early morning and evening.
How many cruise ships visit Leith each year?
Around 40 cruise vessels and 20,000 passengers a year. Across Leith, Rosyth, Dundee, Newhaven and South Queensferry, the Scottish schedule for the current season runs to 159 ship calls.
Last Updated: 7 November 2026