Island Holidays
 

Scottish Islands Expedition Sailing Cruise

Including St Kilda, Mingulay, North Rona and Fair Isle

From the mysteries of neolithic man and Britain's most northerly everything to the magic of the Hebrides, expedition cruising in the Scottish Islands is the perfect way to visit some of the most remote corners of the British Isles. May is the most beautiful time in Scotland when birdlife is coming to its peak, wild flowers are in bloom, the days are long and the midges haven't woken up!

For 2012, to celebrate 25 years of Island Holidays, we're chartering a beautiful sailing ship – the Rembrandt – which carries just 34 passengers. She has the added advantage of the option of running on engines! Every day there are shore landings or zodiac cruises, using these adaptable craft to gain access to areas not visited by other cruise ships – and often not by anyone else either!

Sailing from Aberdeen, the itinerary includes two Orkney islands and Shetland's most southerly island, Fair Isle, with its legendary Bird Observatory and knitwear. We then head west visiting Lewis with its famous standing stones and the World Heritage Site of St Kilda.. Here landing cannot be guaranteed, but our friends at Oceanwide have a very good record and we will also get really close to the largest Gannet colony in the UK with its dramatic cliff scenery.

During the holiday we will take in all aspects of the Scottish islands – their history, their traditions, their archaeology and, of course, their wildlife. This will be a seabird feast (not literally you understand!) with magnificent cliffs and their attendant colonies, the most dramatic of which are on St Kilda. In the Inner Hebrides we'll be watching out for Sea Eagles along with their smaller but still impressive cousin, the Golden Eagle. We might be lucky to see that elusive animal, the European Otter, and botanists will have plenty at which to marvel.

Outline Itinerary

  • Day 1 - Depart Aberdeen
  • Day 2 - Copinsay
  • Day 3 - Fair Isle / Papa Westray
  • Day 4 - North Rona and Sula Sgeir
  • Day 5 - Lewis / Flannan Isles
  • Day 6 - St Kilda
  • Day 7 - Mingulay or Canna
  • Day 8 - Arrive Oban

See the full itinerary below for more details.

Island Holidays Staff

Andy MitchellFor 16 years Andy Mitchell was a career civil servant in his home town of Derby and then Leeds before realising that the outdoor life was calling him. He moved from Leeds to North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory in Orkney for a year's training and ended up staying for nearly five years, as well as falling in love with Orkney. A spell of various expeditions abroad and jobs in conservation followed which gave him a breadth of knowledge and experience. He then joined the RSPB working on research into Song Thrush declines before moving back to Orkney to manage the reserves on Egilsay and Rousay. After ten years with RSPB he left to set up his own business advising on wildlife tourism and doing environmental assessment work based at his home on South Ronaldsay. Birds are his main passion - not in the sense of having to see every species but as conservation indicators. His other interests are all things Cuban, beekeeping, music (he's learning to play the fiddle) and seeing the delight on people's faces when they see those special wildlife moments.


Libby Weir-BreenLibby Weir-Breen set up Island Holidays in 1987 with Shetland naturalist, the late Bobby Tulloch MBE. Her own experience in the travel industry goes back to 1977 when she left her job on The Scotsman newspaper to become a resort representative in St Anton in the Austrian Tyrol. She has travelled widely both researching and leading tours. A passionate conservationist and campaigner for trade justice, Libby has a love for the natural world and feels herself privileged to be able to express this through her work and to share it with so many like-minded people.


S/v Rembrandt van Rijn North Rona - © Rinie van Meurs Puffins

Your Tour Leader

John HarrisonJohn Harrison has worked many times a historian and Expedition Leader in Scotland, visiting the Western Isles and outlying islands up to the Orkneys, Shetlands, and onwards to over 80 degrees North. He is currently writing a series of articles on life in islands on the edge; the first is St Kilda. He has over ten years polar experience in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, making some 75 trips. When not fighting the frost, John is also a Latin American expert. His first book about Patagonia was a Sunday Times Book of the Week, his most recent, about Peru, was the 2011 Wales Book of the Year.

Hirta, St Kilda (World Heritage Site) - © Gareth Jones Scottish islands - landing on the beach

Your Itinerary

Day 1: Aberdeen, famed as the Granite City and many times a winner of the Britain in Bloom competition, is where we embark for our wonderful expedition cruise around the Scottish Islands. A flight to Aberdeen is included in the cost of the holiday, as is the train fare from Oban (where we disembark) to Glasgow and a return flight from Glasgow. We board the ship at 1600 hours for an 1800 hours departure.

Day 2: The first landing of our holiday is Copinsay in Orkney. An RSPB reserve, Copinsay is mainly covered in grass, with 10 hectares of arable, hay and pasture managed as cover for Corncrakes. More than 1,000 pairs of fulmars nest on Copinsay, which has nearly a mile of vertical cliffs up to 76 metres high which are home to a vast seabird colony Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins and Kittiwakes. Black guillemots and shags also nest here and there are, of course, the predators associated with sea bird colonies.

Day 3: Fair Isle, the most southerly in the Shetland archipelago. Fair Isle is a very special place with a strong community spirit. We'll be welcomed by some of the 70 or so inhabitants (famed for their knitwear, examples of which we'll see) and walk to the new Bird Observatory which was officially opened in June 2011. We rejoin the ship for and enjoy a relaxed lunch while she sails to the island of Papa Westray in Orkney where we'll have an evening landing.

Day 4: Out in the Atlantic to the north-west of Scotland lie the tiny islands of North Rona and Sula Sgeir. We plan to land on North Rona to see the seabird colonies and the Grey Seals. The island was inhabited in the 18th century and some remains are still visible: Leach's Petrels can be heard calling from their nesting burrows in the ruined walls of a small church in the 'village'. Moving on we sail around neighboring Sula Sgeir, the last island in Britain on which Gannets are harvested annually. There will be spectacular views of the islands' cliffs where, in 2006, we saw a Black-browed Albatross.

Day 5: The island of Lewis is renowned for its prehistoric stone circle of Callanish, one of the finest in Britain with stones over three metres tall. There are several smaller stone circles and chambered cairns on the nearby moorland. Later there will be great opportunities to watch and photograph Puffins, Guillemots and Razorbills on the Flannan Islands, a group of small islands to the west of the Outer Hebrides.

Day 6: To the west of North Uist lie the St Kilda group of islands. Built of volcanic rock and with cliffs which rise to over 400 metres (the highest in Britain), St Kilda is home to the largest seabird colony in the country. It also has its own sub-species of birds and mice. The famous Soay sheep were probably brought to the islands by Stone Age man over 5,000 years ago. St. Kilda was inhabited until 1930 but then the last of the islanders left the harsh life which is superbly interpreted in the small museum.

Day 7: The small islands of Mingulay, Berneray and Pabay to the south of South Uist are a nature reserve with important breeding populations of Razorbills, Guillemots, Black Guillemots, Puffins, Fulmars and Shags. There are also five species of gull, all the seabirds being attracted by the cliffs and caves which offer safe nesting sites. The islands also have significant historical sites, including the old village on Mingulay which the last islanders left in 1912. The islanders were fishermen and collected the seabirds and eggs for food and also traded the feathers. If the weather is poor we will sail to Canna, one of the 'Small Isles' of the Inner Hebrides. It has a tiny agricultural and cattle-rearing population. From a walk along the cliff top we may see Golden Eagles, White-tailed Eagles and Peregrine Falcons. At the cliff edge the rare Loose-flowered Orchids grow.

Day 8: All good things come to an end. We arrive in Oban, a small but busy harbour town on the West Coast.. From here we tale the delightful scenic rail journey to Glasgow to join our homeward flights.

Please note that this itinerary can be changed without notice at the sole discretion of Island Holidays or their representatives.

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