Day 1: | Depart Aberdeen.
Arrive in Aberdeen (please contact our team to discuss flights or train fares as appropriate), admire the city’s sparkling granite buildings and embark on your cruise around Scotland’s stunning coastline. Set sail into the North Sea passing the famous lighthouse on Girdle Ness, designed by the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson. |
Day 2: | Fair Isle & Mousa Island.
Keep an eye out for grey seals, black guillemots, red-throated divers, arctic skuas and wonderful flora en route to scenic Fair Isle, in the Shetlands, where you will visit a bird observatory. Later, on the small island of Mousa, visit one of the best preserved brochs in Scotland. On a night excursion watch thousands of storm petrels return to their burrows or crevices. |
Day 3: | Foula Island & The Noup.
Visit the small island of Foula to the west of Shetland, home to the largest colony of great skuas in the northern hemisphere. View spectacular cliffs (The Noup) crowded with nesting seabirds and see small ponds where red-throated divers reside. Visit arctic tern and arctic skua colonies and call on some of the islanders who number only about 30. |
Day 4: | North Rona & Sula Sgeir Islands.
Out in the Atlantic to the north-west of Scotland lie the tiny islands of North Rona and Sula Sgeir. Land on North Rona and look at seabird colonies and grey seals. Leach´s Petrels can be heard calling from their nesting burrows in the ruined walls of a small church here. Sula Sgeir is the last island in Britain on which young gannets are still harvested annually. Sail past the island’s spectacular cliffs and keep an eye out for the elusive black-browed Albatros’, one was sighted at this island in 2006! |
Day 5: | Lewis Island & the Flannen Islands.
Visit beautiful Lewis island, where you can see the impressive prehistoric stone circle of Callanish, one of the finest in Britain with stones rising over 3m in height. Later there will be great opportunities to watch and photograph guillemots, razorbills and puffins on the Flannan Islands, a group of small islands to the west of the Outer Hebrides. |
Day 6: | St Kilda Islands.
To the west of the Hebridean isle of North Uist lie the St Kilda group of islands, built of volcanic rock and with the highest cliffs in Britain, rising to over 400m, and home to the largest seabird colony in the country. St Kilda has its own sub-species of birds and mice, and of sheep, the Soay, probably brought here by Stone Age man over 5,000 years ago. Until 1930 St Kilda was inhabited, but then the last of the islanders left leaving a handful of windswept ruins, there is also a military base, which may be visited. |
Day 7: | Mingulay, Berneray & Pabay Islands or Canna Isle.
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. 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. Walk along the cliff top here and you may see golden eagles, white-tailed eagles and peregrine falcons. At the cliff edge the rare loose-flowered Orchids grow. |
Day 8: | Arrive Oban.
Disembark at Oban, a small harbour town in west Scotland. From here you will take the train to Glasgow, a spectacular journey through one of the most scenic parts of Scotland. (Please contact our team to discuss your return journey home; flights and train fares are quoted on a tailor-made basis). |
Note: | Please note that the itinerary for the 21st May 2008 departue travels in the reverse direction - from Oban and to Aberdeen.
Please note all itineraries are for guidance only. Programmes may vary depending on local weather conditions and in order to take advantage of opportunities to see wildlife. Flexibility is paramount for wildlife expedition cruises. |