Coll

Coll beach

I think I know where the Elysian Fields are.


Coll was our only beach landing during Hebridean Princess’ cruises of the inner isles. The passengers were all issued with wellingtons because even the little boats couldn’t get close enough to the shore and we needed to wade through about a foot of water. By the time we left, however, the state of the tide enabled us to re-embark dry-shod.

Coll machair

The island seems to have its own microclimate. 

While we were there, the sun shone, the sky and the sea were blue, the empty, golden beach stretched away into the distance and the whole prospect was quite blissful. 

Early Marsh Orchid

Having walked out along the beach, we returned by way of the machair, the endless fields of wildflowers that fringe the shore. We were greeted by the first lapwing I’ve seen in a long time. Common Blue butterflies, Small Heath, Meadow Brown and a variety of moths including Six-spot Burnets flutter about amongst the swathes of wild geranium, orchids, and several plants I’ve yet to identify. 

You do have to be wary of drifting away from the beach, towards the centre of the island when distracted by the wildlife, but it’s very nice when the crew has set up a mini-restaurant on the sand to welcome you back!

Iona

Common Seal off Iona

Like the originally Graupian, now Grampian, Mountains, the isle of Iona owes its modern name to a transcription mistake dating from the pre-printing age when manuscripts were copied by hand. It seems the name was once Ivova, Latinised as Ioua, meaning a place where yew trees grow.

During our visit, it rained quite a lot, which probably did not create the best impression. We were not inclined to venture out into the hinterland in search of the fabled corncrake, and even though dolphins did frolic around our boat as we went ashore, I couldn’t get any decent photographs.

Iona Abbey

Iona Abbey Cloister

It was one of those days for photographing things that stand still, and better yet for photographing buildings from the inside, though the common seals abounding on offshore rocks obligingly did the former and hence feature in this log.

Iona Nunnery

The main building is, of course, the Abbey, restored in the last century from a state of ruin to become the working centre of an ecumenical community. In the cloister, I was impressed by the care and subtlety with which new stone has been integrated with surviving elements. Although Samuel Johnson found his piety grow warmer amid the ruins of his day, I personally found the restoration less evocative of the past than redolent of a present quest for a lost spirituality. A medieval abbey, for me, does not evoke the 6th century but the popularity of pilgrimages eight or nine hundred years later.

If you want to find links with the earlier period, the mound upon which Columba’s study hut once stood perhaps serves better, and the Abbey museum better still.

The ruined nunnery is also worth a visit; you can pass through its grounds on your way from the port to the Abbey.

Staffa

Staffa

The phenomenal success of the works of Ossian, supposedly a poet of the early Dark Ages, translations of whose alleged works were published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson in the 1760’s, is hard to comprehend in retrospect. Though Macpherson was denounced as a forger by Samuel Johnson, the works inspired, among others, Napoleon, Diderot, Ingres, Jefferson, Scott, Goethe, and of course Mendelssohn, whose Hebrides Overture is popularly known as Fingal’s Cave.

Fingal's Cave

I suppose the magic of the cave would be enhanced by an even greyer, mistier atmosphere and stormier seas than those we encountered, though in such case I should probably have been too sick to appreciate it. As it was, we perhaps got our best view of the cave from the sea, since although we made our way along the rocky causeway to its mouth, the ground at the entrance was under repair and it was quite hard to get a good view into the interior. I was however pleased to see my first rock pipit.

Puffin

Considerably easier to see are the puffins, whose colony is along the coast in the opposite direction from the landing stage. It seems the presence of human visitors reassures the puffins that they can land in front of their burrows without being in danger from skuas or other predators, so if you wait there they simply come to you. 

Similarly unconcerned by visitors was a trio of black guillemots, a third new species to me in a single visit.

Fortunately we arrived early. A couple of other boatloads were disgorged from tourist craft a little later, and like all such fascinating wild places, the wonder of Staffa’s wilderness is a fragile mental construct that is always in danger of being dispelled by excessive numbers of one’s own species.

But not this time. It was marvellous!

Finlaggan

Eilean Mor - ruins of the great hall

All right, the history of the isles is less transparent than is suggested by the Finlaggan visitor centre and a great deal less clear than was described by Scots novelist Nigel Tranter in his justly celebrated Bruce trilogy.

Nevertheless, there are reasonable grounds for believing that the figure of Angus Og MacDonald bestrides the pages of Scottish history like a Colossus as the 13th-century gives way to the 14th.

A consummate politician, Angus Og nominally supported the English king Edward I as long as it allowed him an excuse to make war on the rival Clan MacDougall, but after the deposition of John Balliol and the murder of the Red Comyn, when the nominal King Robert Bruce was hunted like an outlaw through the western highlands by Lame John MacDougall of Lorne, The MacDonald seems to have changed sides.

causeway to Eilean Mor

It is thought, but not absolutely certain that Angus sheltered Bruce at Finlaggan, which was more of a ceremonial centre for the clan than a fortress. There were neighbouring MacDonald castles on Islay that might have served better for defensive purposes. However, standing on the grass of Eilean Mòr, somehow aware of the ghostly presence of a man who scarcely acknowledged the overlordship of any ruler, Scots or English, you feel the two of them were probably both here back then.

Angus Og’s clan of Viking descendants had thrown off the Norwegian yoke and saw no reason to subject themselves to another – and anyone who thought differently was welcome to try sailing his own ships past the Corryvreckan whirlpool to challenge the best galley fleet in the British Isles!

Eilean na Comhairle (council isle), from Eilean Mor

Though Angus Og seems to have waited for confirmation that Bruce could establish himself again on the latter’s return to Scotland, once his man was clearly king again, it was clearly in The MacDonald’s interest to have the mainland divided between Scots and English rather than allow an English hegemony which could threaten the Isles. I think the presence of the Islemen may very well have been decisive for the under-strength Scottish army at Bannockburn, however bad the generalship of Edward II may have been.


It does appear the Bruce thought so too, for Angus Og was well rewarded for his help. It appears he may also have supported Edward Bruce’s ill-fated Irish expedition, and may even have died there. All we know for sure is, he was no longer the Clan Chief in 1330 and that his son John became the first to claim the title ‘Lord of the Isles’.

Laphroaig Distillery, Islay

The stills

Apparently, Laphroaig is very controversial. You might, I suppose, call it the Marmite of whiskies, since people either love it or hate it. However, as the tasting, at the end of our visit, revealed, you don’t necessarily have to have the smoky, peaty variant since they do have others. For my taste the basic 10-year-old single malt is admirable and the Lore blend very nice indeed.

My favourite incident from the distillery’s two hundred year history does not concern its long-running, on again-off again, love-hate relationship with neighbouring Lagavulin, but the remarkable coup of persuading US Customs during the Prohibition era that the contents of the bottles was not whisky but ‘medicinal spirit’. Now that’s what I call marketing! Granted, for a coastal distillery there is always going to be a whiff of seaweed in the air that gives a hint of iodine to the drying barley, but even so…

Barley drying

And it’s English barley! Oh dear, I don’t think they should publicise that too prominently. It appears Scottish barley grows in latitudes too cool and northerly to deliver the required yield. (I write this on the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures even in Islay expected to reach 30 degrees Celsius). Maybe by the time global warming means I am growing grapes on Sliabh Mannan rather than making hedgerow wines, Scottish arable farmers will be able to open up a new market?

Laphroaig is apparently the only Islay distillery still cutting the peat for its smoking oven by hand. I don’t know how much difference that makes to the whisky, but it does suggest a respect for the old ways that is important to some customers.

I’m told HRH The Prince of Wales is a fan, so I’m in good company.

Jura

Hebridean Princess off Jura

The first port of call for Hebridean Princess's (left) July Cruise of the Inner Hebrides was Jura.

I must confess to knowing little of Jura before visiting it. Perhaps I shouldn’t claim that a single morning, featuring a stroll up the hill behind the largest settlement, Craighouse, and a wander back along the shoreline to our boat landing stage, makes me any kind of expert. However, in that short time, I found enough of interest to persuade me that I would welcome the opportunity to spend more time on this fascinating island.

The name Jura is derived from the old Norse for ‘Deer Island’ and today 5,000 red deer outnumber the inhabitants by around twenty-five to one. The island was home to George Orwell in his last years and can claim to be the birthplace of ‘1984’, though anywhere less resembling Winston Smith’s dystopian environment would be hard to find. Its three mountains, ‘The Paps’, are visible from a great distance, including from other, more low-lying islands in the inner Hebrides.

Standing stone & puffer, Craighouse

Jura was an early centre of the Scottish colonisation of Alba, and the shore of the mainland beyond it came to be known as Argyle (The Gallic Coast). Over the years it was important in disputes between the kings of Norway and Scotland and between various clans and factions in the isles. However the population was sharply reduced in the Clearances and now the local economy relies primarily on whisky, sporting estates and tourism. The ferry from the mainland runs only in summer and during the rest of the year access is only via the neighbouring island of Isla.

Rosy Starling

Our very alert local minibus driver spotted a pair of sea-otters out on a rocky islet; I would certainly have missed them. Sadly they came no closer, but on the way back I was lucky enough to see another celebrated visitor in the shape of a rosy starling. “You don’t just come across a rare bird sitting on a housetop,” I thought. But it seems on Jura you do, and since there are so few people there, I was able to observe it without a crowd of twitchers snapping away beside me.

Speckled Wood

A single red deer looked out of the long grass beside the road, a procession of oystercatchers sauntered by along the seaweed and rocks of the shore, a solitary grey heron maintained its statuesque fishing pose, and on the hill behind the village, I saw my first ever Speckled Wood butterfly (right) ...

Sedge Warbler

... while my first sedge warbler (left) popped up in the reed bed beside the shore.

Unfortunately, we’d sailed past the fabled whirlpool of Corryvreckan during dinner the previous evening, so all I saw of it was a large area of disturbed water visible through the dining room windows.

That’s on my bucket list for next time, along with a visit to the mountainous areas and an opportunity, perhaps, to see some of the local eagles, deer, and seals.

Should anyone be undecided about a visit to Jura, I'd recommend it. And if you're lucky you won't encounter any lesser-spotted former PMs.