Scottish Islands Cruise: May 27—Jun 04, 2008

A unique journey through the Scottish islands—Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides, and remote St. Kilda. This itinerary covers a huge area of Scotland's finest and most far-flung island outposts. Cruise in comfort to the very best historical, cultural, and archaeological sites with spectacular birding at northern Europe's largest and most diverse seabird colonies.

VENT is chartering the small (46-passenger) Grigoriy Mikheev for a unique voyage through the Scottish Islands. We've designed our own cruise route to take you, in one journey, through the Shetlands and Orkneys, fantastic St. Kilda, and the Inner and Outer Hebrides via the best birding, historical, and archaeological sites of these magical islands.

Starting in the "Granite City" of Aberdeen, we sail north to Shetland. We'll be able to explore the eerie, nocturnal world of European Storm-Petrels at their colony, nesting in a fine Iron Age broch, and discover the strong Viking and Norse influences in these northerly outposts with a stroll around the large complex of Jarlshof, occupied since the Bronze Age. Passing many spectacular seabird colonies, we'll have a morning on the lonely Fair Isle, halfway between Shetland and Orkney—famous for its distinctive knitting designs and long-established Bird Observatory.

The Orkneys have some of the best-preserved archaeological sites in Europe awaiting us: Maes Howe, the most complete Neolithic tomb in existence; the Ring of Brodgar, the largest Stone Circle in Scotland; and Skara Brae, a finely excavated Neolithic village. Here, too, are more "recent" delights, such as the fine town of Kirkwall itself with its early Norse-influenced cathedral and the World War II battleships of the Churchill Barriers. We'll sail past 1,000-foot sea cliffs and Pinnacles of Hoy, where breeding seabirds—including Great Skuas—darken the skies, as we continue on to the Outer Hebridean islands of Harris and Lewis. Here we find more rugged scenery and remarkable ancient historical sites, such as the mysterious Standing Stones of Callanish. We can discover what life was like just a few centuries past in the rebuilt villages of blackhouses, the traditional low dwelling places of the Gaelic peoples in the 16th-19th centuries.

A highlight of our trip should be our visit to the faraway St. Kilda archipelago, abandoned as Britain's remotest inhabited outpost in 1930. Here is a land of superlatives: the largest Northern Gannet colony in the world, the largest Northern Fulmar colony in Europe, and the highest sea cliffs in Britain at 1,400 feet.

Heading back east we'll arrive at gentler islands of the Inner Hebrides with further great birding opportunities—many northern specialties, breeding shorebirds, loons, and wildfowl—to keep us busy. Throughout our sea voyages we will have seabirds around us constantly (the British Isles are home to globally important numbers of all the North Atlantic species, including Manx Shearwater). The pretty and varied island of Mull and offshore satellites will beckon. Canna and Mull are strongholds of nesting White-tailed Eagles. Staffa, with its columnar basalt cliffs and Fingal's Cave, was an inspiration for Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture. We'll visit Iona and its Abbey, where Corn Crakes rasp their loud interminable songs in rich flower meadows that have remained the same since the island first became a site of early Christian settlement and pilgrimage by St. Columba 1,400 years ago. Our tour will finish on the other side of Scotland, in the charming west coast port of Oban.

Easy cruising mixed with shore excursions and Zodiac expeditions.